An Impromptu Camping Excursion

It took a long time to find our camping spot. We ended up driving out of Mt. Charleston to Lee's Canyon. Apparently the temperatures in Lee's Canyon drop to 38 degrees at night instead of the 52 degrees we were prepared for. The old Campground Host told us that here on the other side of the mountain, it gets much colder than Mt. Charleston. "Mummy Mountain," he said, as if that phrase was the end-all explanation of how cold it was going to get. "Mummy Mountain," he repeated three or four more times (either for emphasis or simply randomly). That was our first surprise.

Our second surprise was that shortly after hot dogs, smores and a few ghost stories, Grant, our super-active, ultra-adventurer, was ready for bed. He was begging us to let him go to bed. This kid never wants to go to bed. But there he was, absolutely aching to get into his sleeping bag and hit the hay. But not alone. Nope. Matt's campfire story about Old Man Rusty Quinn (which he made up as he went along) was enough to keep Grant from going back to the tent by himself. In the middle of the night, I awoke to find Grant laying outside of his sleeping bag. I woke him up to tell him to get back inside and he said, "Well, help me to find the beginning entrance!" As he got snuggled back inside the warm bag, he said, "I love you Mom, let's do this more times! Next time lets do a 3 nighter!"

Spencer was so cute. It was pretty clear that he didn't want to be there at all. He didn't throw a fit about it, but he did keep walking over to the car, tapping it on the hood and yelling over to us, "ZOOM! ZOOM!" It got better for him when the sun went down. He was utterly enamored with the millions of brilliant stars in the sky (we don't see many of them closer to town) and the great big trees and mountains. He wanted to walk around and star gaze instead of eating our delicious campfire-prepared chocolate smores.

Grant aching for bedtime and Spencer skipping a sweet treat??? Who are these kids and what have they done with mine?

Check out the lovely view from our tent.

Though we had a great time everyone was ready to get home. The frigid morning air up at "Mummy Mountain" made it difficult to feel excited about the great camping breakfast I had planned. So we packed up and headed home at about 7 a.m.

Spencer can't get enough of his cars and was happy to be snuggled in his own bed for naptime.

I had a nice long nap and then enjoyed a few microwave smores. I will face the clean up this afternoon...but for now I am just going to rest and enjoy looking at our pictures and thinking about the fun time we had on our first-ever family caming trip.