The great outdoors

Last night Emmett and I had our first ever camping trip. We crossed the Golden Gate Bridge and camped at a small, primitive campground in Tennessee Valley. We were actually all of 12 miles from our front door in road miles, even less as the crow flies. However, it really did feel like we were far from people. We had to hike about 0.9 miles from the parking lot to our spot and 0.7 miles of that was off of a main trail line. On that last 0.7 miles the only other people we saw were occupants of the other 3 tents on the site and a crew of 4 camera operators from the Discovery Channel who were spending their last of four consecutive days filming a bobcat who liked to hunt our campground (we didn't see the bobcat).

We chose the site not only for its proximity, but because it is known to have a lot of barn and great horned owls, and Emmett has been obsessed with owls. We ended up hearing many owls, but didn't see any. He was still happy about that aspect of the trip.

The trip was pretty fun. Some things were tough. For example, Emmett was so excited about camping that he didn't nap (first missed nap in a long time). This made for a grumpier Emmett most of the evening. Also, in keeping with the tradition my mom and aunt set up when they took me on my first camping trip, I forgot half of the food I had packed at home. This added to Emmett's grumpiness as I had promised him some dried mango leather I had made a while back and I only learned I had forgotten that bag when we arrived. We had enough food to survive, though, so neither of us perished.

During the evening Emmett spotted two deer who let us approach quite close and we saw a couple of turkeys. Everything was pretty wet or muddy because of the recent rain, but it was also very green which was nice.

As we were preparing for bed, I was changing Emmett into his pajamas when I noticed that he had a tick on his shoulder. I must have had a pretty horrified face based on Emmett's later reaction (I really do not like ticks), but I recovered, tried to remain calm, and tried to plan how to remove it. I first tried holding Emmett and trying to get it, but he screamed out as he knew it was something I took seriously. It was getting dark quickly and I didn't want him to scream, but each time I tried that was what happened and he would tuck his chin into his shoulder so the tick was hidden. I weighed options such as asking other campers for help, giving up and leaving, or giving up and leaving the tick in. While I was thinking I asked Emmett if he knew what I was trying to do, what a tick was, etc., and he knew nothing except he didn't want me to touch his shoulder. Finally I decided on brute force, held him tightly with one arm, and twisted it out (counter-clockwise...I remember having a tick in Arizona, calling a nurse as I had been told earlier that I could put butter on it or turn it one direction or another and was sure that all of these must be myths, and then hearing the exact same advice from a nurse...anyway, I turned CCW as I figured it was fifty-fifty my being wrong). I showed Emmett what I was after, but it was crawling around and I was creeped out and ended up just flicking it out of the tent.

Emmett said the extraction didn't hurt. The subsequent sleep went pretty well. Emmett couldn't decide if he wanted to sleep in his own sleeping bag or mine, so he hopped between the two before falling asleep in his own but in my arms. He woke up cold in the middle of the night (out of his bag in his squirming) and transferred to my bag. The sleep felt like it was made up of many half-hour segments, but was pretty good.

During the night one of the noises that was pretty loud was the falling of the acorn-like things from eucalyptus trees which were right next to the site. It is funny that the panhandle playground is covered with these and judging by the frequency of the noises while we were sleeping they must fall all of the time, but all of the surrounding noise must hide it.

The other noise I had never heard that I know of is the sound of ravens flying overhead. There were many in the trees and the heavy beating of their wings was really prominent at times.

We will probably give this another try in a couple of weeks. It is a nice break for Andrea to get the house to herself for a change (she takes him away for nights much, much more than I do). Below are some pictures from camping---the two of Emmett's two camping partners were taken by him. (side note: I brought Emmett's bike so that he would ride at least some of the trail. The first 0.2mi were paved and downhill. He loved it and rode probably an extra 0.4 miles past the turn. I had to throw all of the stuff down so I could run after him. When he saw me running after him he went even faster. Lots of fun). Also I am putting in a couple from the day before when Andrea and Emmett buzzed the neighborhood as superheroes on scooters. Ours is a very safe neighborhood...now.