Huntsville or Bust

Sunday was the start of football season. That’s probably not even true. But Sunday was the first of many Sundays that required my husband watch 10 straight hours of football. He’s one of the few that has somehow managed to support a family doing his favorite things for 10 hours (I am eternally grateful for this). But for me, that’s 10 hours of the nauseating hum of announcers and fans and whistles and that awful song that lets you know the commercials are about to play and advertisements for big trucks and fast cars and bikini-clad women eating giant burgers. It’s an all-out attack on my eyeballs and eardrums and yesterday was just too beautiful for me to stick around for it. So I dragged the boys to Huntsville State Park for the day. We’ve been talking about doing a proper camping trip with the boys, but I’m pretty intimidated. I’ve only tent camped with my in-laws and somehow everything was magically and perfectly prepared by a fairy or something. But I’m not sure that same fairy knows where we live or where we plan to camp so I thought I’d get a little practice just in case she doesn’t show up. Here’s what I learned:

  1. Pack plates and napkins even if you’re only making hot dogs and s’mores. Luckily, the park gives REALLY big receipts for everything so yep…hot dog plates.
  2. If your lighter was only barely working at home, just buy a new one because it will not work at all when you need it the most. Campers next to me saw my struggle and let me borrow theirs. I gave them s’mores supplies for all the kids there and now we’re besties.
  3. Canoes are hot as hell. Wear something other than your bathing suit.
  4. Geocaching only works if your phone gets reception. In other words, quit T-Mobile.

Despite the few little hiccups, we had such a great time. No one was ready to come home and everyone is ready to go back. I even got a “this is so much better than video games”. We’ll see about that.

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