I love adventure....I have an adventurous spirit. I love the excitement that goes along with doing something you haven't done or experienced before. I remember when Matt got the job up here I was so excited! I couldn't really care less where we live, as long as we are together, that is all that matters! Now, I love being spontaneous and all too, however.....there are seldom many times that my spontaneity has worked for me, and this particular occasion is no different!
I was keen to head out on a little camping trip with the family as we hadnt been on one for awhile, and never by ourselves. With Matt's work, he gets a few days off every swing, so i thought it would be ample time for us to head down to Coral Bay. My thought process went a little something like this: "Yay...lets do it. We will go camping. It will be fun. We will go to Coral Bay, its only like 5 hours in the car...that's a piece of cake! It wont cost us much, ive already got supplies for meals we can take..ill just need to grab some fruit and we will be sweet as! We will leave at like 6:30am and be there by lunchtime...too easy! We will cook some snags up for lunch and kids can have a play down by the beach. Couple of nights...bliss! Matt and I can take some wine and some yummy nibbles...stay up late chatting, kicked back on our camping chairs! Perfect!"
Matt was not too keen on this camping trip from the get go! He doesnt like being rushed into things...and in hindsight...its probably not a bad quality to have! But all along, I kept reassuring him what a fantastic time we would have!
So, Matt finished up work early on Tuesday morning. He sleeps til around noon, so while he was sleeping, I whipped up a quick shopping list of things I wanted to grab before we left. DD1 had Kindy Prep and dancing to go to, so Matt did the run around to those whilst I tried my best to pack everything! There is no such thing as lightly packing in our house! I just dont get it! How on earth can you need SO much stuff when you are only camping for 2 nights! I had a huge container filled with all the bedding (fitted sheets, sleeping bags, blankets and 2 sets of towels - 1 for the beach and 1 for showering). Another container was filled with fruit and snacks and cooking utensils etc. We borrowed Matt's brothers Engel which was a godsend - so much easier and neater than using an Esky!, then we had the portacot for DD2. On the roof of the car was the tent, the self inflating mattresses (one for us and one for DD1), 2 x jerry cans, 1 x gas bottle for the bbq cooker we borrowed also from the brother in law! I had a little bag with pencils and paper and buckets and spades for the girls. And then a suitcase with clothes for us all.
By the time I got back from the shops, it was quite late so we had a simple dinner of eggy soldiers, and popped the kids to bed, while I got busy preparing our dinner that we would take camping! I made Grandma Zoe's amazing beef casserole - which is quite simple, but takes a good hour or so to prep and then 2 hours to cook!! Then i whipped up some cupcakes as a treat also. We didnt hit the hay til close on midnight, and were both too stuffed to even begin packing the car. We declared we would wake at 5am to chuck everything in the car and on the roofrack and would hit the road by 6:30. Matt set his alarm (he told me to set mine too, but I was too tired to bother with that) so off we went to sleep.
**beep beep** I woke to a FB message from a friend on my phone (completly unrelated, but thank you Mel!) - it was 7:30am! What the?!? Noooooooooo....where was our alarm? Why didnt it go off?! Seriously....worst start to the camping trip ever! We sprung out of bed cursing the morning (and cursing myself for not setting my alarm as backup!). This was gonna be a great day!
We started packing the car and getting the kids fed and ready. The car was almost packed when Matt couldn't find some screw for the jerry cans so there was more fussing around, as if they didnt clip in properly, we couldnt store them anywhere (or take them) as there was no room in the car for them! Stress!!! We had also completely forgotten to update the kids USB with movies...so I fumbled around on the computer to get that going whilst we kept packing.
We finally hit the road at about 9:30am, a good 3 hours after we had wanted - which was disappointing as it really would cut into the girls play time when we arrived. The drive was long, and slow....and you know what? Its not just a quick 5 hour drive to Coral Bay...IT'S ACTUALLY 6.5 HOURS...and when you add in a fuel stop (and sanity stretch of the leg and wee stop) make that closer to 7 hours! Slight oversight on my part!
At the fuel stop, Matt found a dead butterfly and brought it around to show DD1 (who LOVES butterflies at the moment. The other day, out of the blue, she came to me and said: "Mummy, I just want to be a butterfly. I just want to fly up high with my wings. And I want you and daddy and DD2 to be butterflies too!"). So he brings this butterfly to her, and says: "Look at this beautiful butterfly. It is dead, but you can have a hold and look at it". Instantly, her face changed to sheer devastation. Tears began rolling down her precious little cheeks and she started sobbing. REALLY sobbing. She held that butterfly with so much love and tenderness and was asking "Who killed the butterfly, why did it have to die? I just love the butterfly mummy. I just love butterflies." Precious heart. Isn't it amazing how innoncent little ones are, and how huge their hearts are for all of God's creation. She used to cry when we killed a cockroach in the house! Yet....in the blink of an eye, she can throw daggers of dislike towards DD2 and yell and scream and fight and carry on....go figure.
The kids were pretty good in the car trip...just the usual "Im hungry...I want a movie...I need my water...I need to do a wee....this is taking too long.....when are we going to get there...I want to go home with Billie.....why cant Billie come with us.....I want my iPad.....I dont want my iPad anymore...." You get the drift
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| Gloomy clouds! |
As we were driving I could see stormy looking clouds in the distance. And I kind of knew that the weather would be rainy, but me with my adventurous spirit was not phased by that at all! How fun! I love the sound of rain on a tent!
About an hour out of Coral Bay, the rain started...just spitting nothing major. We arrived at the campsite, and the kids were quite content to just play in the car while we got to setting the tent up. A few people walked past asking if we wanted any help, "Oh no, we are ok, thank you!". I said to Matt, maybe we should get someone to help us, but he said, now is as good a time as any for us to learn how to set it up on our own! We were doing quite well, until the rain started.....and it didnt take long for those little rain drops to turn into big whopping rain drops! There was an older couple camped next to us in a swanky camper trailer. The man came over and he was such a sweetheart, he came and asked us if he could make us a cup of coffee....I said that would be lovely, but when we get the tent up and running then we could join him! By this stage, the rain started pelting down and it was unrelenting! The man staying behind us, along with another lady and the old man next to us all came to help us put the tent up! SO kind of them....they all had awesome camper vans/caravans and didnt need to come out in the pouring rain for us...but they did! And if they hadnt...we would have been screwed! hahah...we would have got it up, but it would have taken us probably an hour longer!
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| The caravan park was flooded - water just wasn't draining away at all! |
All the while this was going on, the kids were still in the car, but kept opening the door and closing it, screaming at each other. DD1 kept needing the toilet. So you can just imagine the frustration that was going on!
Now this tent....deserves a paragraph of its own. IT IS EPIC!!! There are so many poles, all colour coded (we had forgotten about this until we were halfway through erecting the stupid thing!). And its just confusing! But until you get the fly on the top of the tent.....that rain, just continues to pool on the inside of the tent! And the fly is another story to itself - its just a guessing game as to which way its meant to go one - we kinda just threw it over the top and hoped for the best! With a bit of patience and perseverance by everyone...we got the damn thing up! And I went inside to assess the damage. We had our own little swimming pool inside the tent! No joke....It was completely flooded! While Matt continued to get things off the roof of the car, I started scooping up water into buckets to tip out of the tent. I filled up about 4 x 20 litre buckets of water from the inside of that tent! How crazy is that! The kids were going cray cray jumping in the puddles and giggling their little heads off! They were saturated....we all were!
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| Oh - just casually scooping up the pool of water from our tent...as you do! |
Once I had scooped most of the water out, I still needed to dry up the floor so we could put our bedding down! Now remember, I bought 2 sets of towels for us all (yehh....smart thinking Danica!!) as I used all of them drying up the floor! It was still damp when I was finished, but it was better! We had our MAMMOTH picnic blanket in the back of our car too (another godsend, thank goodness we hadn't taken it out of the car!) so we were able to put that down on the floor in the girls part of the tent, which was another godsend....they could somewhat keep their feet dry and stop their beds getting wet.
By the time we had set the beds and tent up...we were all drenched...absolutely soaked through! We were meant to be reheating that lovely casserole for dinner, on the gas BBQ....but there was no way we could do that with all the rain still heavily pouring outside. Matt suggested taking it up to the ablution blocks and cooking it up there....haha...ahhhhhhhh no thanks! Off to the pub we go! We had no nice clothes...just trackies and jumpers! I looked like a drowned rat....I asked Matt if I looked ok, and he said I looked fine...hmmmm
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| Crazy smiles - what else can you do! |
We got to the pub and were informed there would be over an hour wait for food - the rugby was on so it was quite busy - and I guess, when its raining, where else would you rather be in a town like coral bay? I looked at the menu and there wasnt really anything GF or DF for the girls...awesome! If they have even the slightest speck of Dairy or Gluten....we all suffer! So I ordered them some fish and chips, and just hoped I could pull the batter off the fish for them. We grabbed a drink and a bag of nuts and waited...and waited...and waited for our food to come! The girls made friends with some other little kids there, which I guess was the biggest highlight of the trip for them...second to jumping in puddles in the tent of course. I made a quick trip to the loo (which I had to walk out in the rain to), looked in the mirror and noticed I had mascara smudged beautifully under my eyes...such a pretty drowned panda I was! Thanks, Matt! I wont trust your definition of looking 'fine' again ;) hahah
I got ZERO sleep - not just from the rain and the flooded tent and a sore back (as I had managed to put it out quite badly unpacking the car), but the people opposite us decided to pack up and go, at like 10:30/11pm at night! So they were banging around and had their headlights shining directly into our tent! Then when they left, the people behind them were up having a grand old boozy chat....til oh you know like 12:30am! I was seething, mainly as I just thought, if the kids wake up...the whole caravan park will know about it and I will not be the one resettling them....you wake them, you put them back to bed!!! hahah you know it! I would have marched out of that tent and demanded they come and help put the kids back to sleep...or I would have demanded we trade places...they could sleep in our tent and we in their swanky campervan! Not really.....but that's what I would want to do!
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| The amount of rain that fell overnight - apparently it was around 60ml (Matt thought even 100ml!) |
The rain just kept coming down all night and the water level was so high outside that it trickled into the tent - so our mattresses/pillows/bedding was slightly soaked! There was a pool of water around the bed on the sides. I could splash my hand in the water whilst laying on my bed....
Through it all, I wasnt grumpy or agitated or anything like that! I just kept saying to Matt - what should we do? I just didnt know what to expect! By the time morning came, that picnic rug that was protecting the floor in the girls area, was soaked through - water squelching under your feet. My pillow and part of our doona was soaked through. We ate some cereal sitting on the edge of our bed, then I went to get the girls dressed in some dry warm clothes...and what do you know....our suitcase had somehow managed to get soaked too! But not all the clothes....just the warm ones I needed to use for the girls! hahahaha......typical!
We went for a walk to check out the beach (it had stopped raining at this point)....got down to the waters edge...and of course, thats when it decided to start raining again! So we ran back up to the shelter of the shops and grabbed a cup of coffee and a babycino for the kids. DD1 was in a foul mood - with some serious threenager attitude. We made the decision to pull up stumps and head home.
Back at the tent, we chucked the kids in the car while we set to packing up everything. We had just got everything out of the tent, and started pulling out the pegs, when it started pelting with rain again! Half our luck! hahahaha Seriously...not much else could go wrong!
I took the girls for a quick bounce on the jumping pillow (SO much fun that thing!) and a play at the playground...It was raining...they got soaked and dirty, but it was something for them to do! Then we jumped in the car and set off home again! We were on the road by 10:30am and got back home by about 5pm. Matt looked at me, and I just laughed. Im glad we could laugh about it - and Matt even apologised for being a cranky pants that night!We both agreed that next time I had a sponteanous thought, we would sit down and research all aspects, including the weather...thoroughly before we made any decisions!
It took us the whole of the next day to unpack the car, clean the car, hang out the tent and the picnic blanket and mattresses to dry. I did 7 loads of washing...7!!! Luckily, with the weather we get here, it didnt take long for the washing to dry! Now, Im pretty sure that this would probably be competition for the shortest and most eventful epic fail of a camping trip in the Guinness book of records! But you know what...I would do it all again in a heartbeat - because its life...its making memories - even if they are silly ones!
Have you ever had a spontaneous fail? Or a camping fail? I would LOVE to hear your stories....to make me feel better about myself...hahahah! Just kidding...I'm ok...really **she says whilst rocking back and forth in the corner**
Have you ever had a spontaneous fail? Or a camping fail? I would LOVE to hear your stories....to make me feel better about myself...hahahah! Just kidding...I'm ok...really **she says whilst rocking back and forth in the corner**
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| Some random tree Matt thought would make a good photo! |
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| We stopped at Fortescue River on the way home - look at that bliss weather - shoulda camped there! |
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