Crazy Camping

A few weeks ago, we threw the kids and a bajillion other things into the car to go down to St. George for my first real race of the season. I would have preferred to go down by myself but that was not an option. One-night camping trips (with kids) that include a 4 hour car ride are not on my list of Favorite Things To Do. But Karl's uncle's basement was flooded and therefore unavailable and hotels are never an option.


I know. These pictures don't look like things were too crazy. But that's because I took all of them in the first few minutes of what turned out to be a long, long night. When we first got to Sand Hollow Reservoir, it was beautiful. Except for the bugs. Oh, and the fact that we thought the campground was right by the start of the race but it turned out to be 2 miles away!


We got out of the car and into the red sand. We did not make it to Moab this spring, so Noah was especially excited.


We threw rocks.


We got dirty.


We splashed in the water.


But only Noah went swimming.

So much more fun than a boring hotel, right?

But then I had to drive another 30 minutes into town to pick up my race packet. I left Karl with two dirty, hungry, tired boys. That's a big job, especially when camping in sand. But Karl is a trooper and never complained. I was the one complaining. Because this was not what I consider ideal pre-race conditions.

When I finally made it back, everyone else was in bed. The only problem: the wind. We were once again reminded why they named the nearest town Hurricane. Very fitting. And it never stopped blowing. All night. At 11:30 I was still wide awake and now covered by an inch of red sand. Including my eyes. Max kept stirring and so I finally decided to move the two of us into the back of the car. That seemed like the best solution. Karl had to move into our tent to keep it from blowing over. Unfortunately, Noah was not heavy enough to keep his tent on the ground, so it blew over with him in it. That was around 3:30 am. And that was also the end of our night. Max, Noah, and I had a little earl morning "party" in the car while Karl was trying hard to pack everything up in the dark and storm.

Well, as for the race: they cancelled the swim. Too much wind. Not a surprise to us. So they had us do an additional 5km run at the beginning. I usually don't like duathlons but this one turned out to be fun. I was able to run away from the ladies at the beginning and never got caught. Lucky!

Now (three weeks later) that we have (almost) cleaned up the mess we came home with (except for the red sand I still find in the dryer and other random places), we all agree that it was an

unforgettable epic adventure.

And you can never have enough of those, right?