Yep…we’ve been roughing it the last few days.  The sun finally came back Wednesday with just the barest of rain showers on Thursday afternoon, so the munchikin and I have been on a camping trip extraordinaire!

And it’s quite a conundrum to me actually.  Not sure how to feel about this.  It certainly does smack of redneckishness…I mean really, camping in your backyard???  On the other side of the ginormous cedar playset with the bright blue canopy and slide?  Within the fence meant to keep the wild creatures in…I mean out.  Sorry, visions of the wild one I live with momentarily distracted me.  Bears out, children in.  Simple.  Oh yes, and roaming dogs too.  Melancholy point there, but it must be made.

So…part of the backwoods camping purist in me is really struggling with hot water to wash dishes after every meal, a flushing toilet, my triple 1/2 caffe dark chocolate mocha with whip WHENEVER my little heart desires and not the lame attempt made over the fire in the little aluminum camping coffee pot.  And then of course there’s the well-stocked refrigerator, meaning no issues with melting bags of ice or 4 inches of water in the bottom of the cooler, soaking the egg carton and any other wayward food item that wasn’t packed well to begin with.

Definitely some plusses to the whole “backyard” thingy.

And hard to come up with negatives.  Except that, well, it is the backyard.  I mean really.  Really.

Course, the first summer we were here, 2010, we loaded everything up and headed out to find a perfect camping spot.  We eventually did…nestled among some aspen trees, off of the road a ways (the husband doesn’t care for campgrounds, so we are usually far from such a place)…made a fire ring, had some yummy dinner and then breakfast the next morning.  Then we loaded up and headed home.  We turned off the highway and started up our road.  Just at the point where the hill crests and you look down on the house, we both looked at each other and started laughing.  Because at that point it was a tiny bit comical.  We’d made this big production about “going camping.”  We’d loaded up and drove off into the forest.  And then we came home…to the forest.  To our home nestled in the aspen groves…with the National Forest out the backdoor.

Needless to say, we’ve not done that again.  Well, the diva and I went to Rocky Mountain National Park two summers ago and camped for a night.  That was fun.  But not last year…too dry.  We didn’t even camp in the backyard.  Cause how much fun is camping if you can’t have a fire and s’mores??? I mean really.  Really.

So…here we are again.  Camping in the back yard.  I am so conflicted.  I’m looking out the window right now at the tent set up next to the fire ring with our camp chairs and the stack of firewood.  Course, the playset is in the way of this idyllic picture and the fence is a dead giveaway.  But I digress….

The darling daughter just thinks it’s the most awesome thing to have breakfast over the campfire.  And every other meal too.  So I’ve been trying to get creative.  However, last night’s dinner of scallops and stir-fry veggies fell short I must say.  In my defense, I think the scallops were pretty poor quality…so there.  But the pancakes and eggs/hash browns were a big hit.  Yeah me.

Some photographic evidence of our adventure:

Not sure if we’ll be out there again tonight or not.  I expect yes, though there are some gray clouds building to the west.  Guess we’ll see!

Cheers!