My 4 yr old daughter has been saying that she wants to go winter camping(even though she has no idea what it's like ;-). Who am I to refuse? This weekend finally had some normal weather so a date was made.
I worked all day and when I got home at dinner my wife told me our daughter had been talking about going camping all day, non-stop.
We packed up a minimal overnight kit, since we'd just had dinner and would be home for breakfast in the morning. We hoisted our packs and headed out into the woods behind our house (we live at the edge of town) and up the ridge.
We found a nice spot with a great view of the bay and the city lights below us.
I didn't bring my Hex pyramid since there is only a few inches of loose snow on top of frozen ground, staking or deadmen would be hard.
Instead we took a tarp, because there was snow in the forecast for the night. I could only anchor it to trees and bushes, the ground was rock hard.
We had some hot cocoa and popcorn and hit the sack.
In the morning we woke to the wind howling in the treetops and spindrift blowing under the tarp (with no useable stakes, I couldn't stake the tarp any tighter to the ground.
We had tea and a snack and packed up to head home. My daughter said she was excited to go again!
I think we are ready to try a real overnight ski trip, with dinner and breakfast in camp, now.
