Camping with a 14 Month Old (Part 1)

Wednesday, July 20
Two and a half weeks ago, we left for CO and a camping trip with my parents, aunt, and cousin. We were supposed to leave on Wednesday at 3pm. Mitch worked from home that day so that we could leave early, but it didn't work out so well. He actually ended up having to work until 4:30 (he was planning on stopping at 2 to help me pack up the car), but he wasn't able to finish his project on time, and ended up having to just wrap it up and have someone at the office finish while we were gone.

We finally headed out the door an hour and a half late, and then had to fight our way through traffic since we left during rush hour. I was more than a little annoyed at this point, and Witten wasn't happy to be in a car seat after being at school all day.

We arrived in Dalhart around 1am and got into our hotel room. We were supposed to meet at my aunt's house in Lubbock that night, but since we changed the camping place from NM to CO due to burn bans, it was going to be a long drive on Thursday, so we knocked a few hours off by staying in Dalhart.

The hotel was nasty...that was my fault. I told my dad I didn't want to pay $65 a night, so we ended up in a $40 a night place. For me it wasn't that bad because we arrived in time to go to sleep and then woke up just in time to leave. I don't think our neighbors appreciated us much. Witten woke up when we got there and was pretty wired for about hour and a half, so he cried a lot when we tried to put him back down.

Thursday, July 21
We left the hotel fairly early and drove out the Monarch Pass. My dad had told us about a short cut, so we plugged the coordinates into my GPS and it seemed to take us his way. As we were driving, we realized it was a different way than what he told us. We got stopped for construction at one point, and they got stopped for a fatality accident, so on the pass, we ended up right behind my parents and were able to follow them into the camp ground.

It took me and Mitch a couple of hours to get the tent up (it's huge and we'd never used it before), and to get everything into it. Then the guys went to get water, and it was time for dinner.

Everyone was exhausted, so we packed it in early.

(I didn't get any pictures of these first two days. I was too tired I guess)