The weather here in Alaska the past week was absolutely beautiful. We stopped at the Alaska State Fair and the weather couldn’t have been any better. However, I knew that our luck with this amazing sunshine and actual shorts weather was going to soon come to an end. So this past weekend was Labor Day and J had four days off so I wanted us to take full advantage of this. An amazing idea came to me and I thought, “dude, let’s go camping”. We have a tent, I have some previous camping experience, Jacks in the army so he’s useful outdoors, what could possibly go wrong??
Well, let me just tell you. First of all, I wanted to go to Denali National Park because if you’re in Alaska, you like have to go there I guess. It’s just a short four hour drive. No big deal. William actually wasn’t too bad in the car and slept most of the time (which later ended up being a bad thing because then he didn’t need a nap or want to go to bed that evening). We stopped at some point to get gas at a sketchy gas station where the pump wasn’t working. The old man who worked there was kinda creepy and came out of the store, yelling at us that we had broken the pump. Now I’m honest and I can say with full faith that we did NOT break the pump because it had something to do with the fact that no gas was coming out. The old man just kept saying how we messed it up and wasn’t trying to fix the problem so I told him, “it’s fine, we actually didn’t need any gas so we’re just gonna go but thank you for your help,” and Jack and I got out of there as fast as we could.
Now, I love my husband and he is very intelligent in most cases, however….for my life, I cannot understand why he didn’t think we needed to pack more than just snacks for our OVERNIGHT CAMPING TRIP. I suggested sandwiches because they’re simple and cheap and easy to pack, I suggested hotdogs because that’s a pretty standard camping meal but no, Jack wanted to eat at restaurants near the campsite 😓 I won’t get much more into the details of that discussion because I want y’all to think we’re perfect but we had a less than perfect discussion about that and ended up having s’mores for dinner 🙃. I love my husband. I love my husband. I love my husband. Repeat until the hanger passes..
We did get the camp set up pretty quickly though. That was one positive. I’ve put up a few tents up in my life so I was able to put this one up mostly by myself. Jack did get the fire started by himself…with a flint….because he refused to buy a lighter but boy was that fire nice and hot after an hour of Jack trying to get it started. Repeat ‘I love my husband’ and be thankful that there is at least a fire now.
So next is some of the good parts finally because of course it wasn’t all bad. We were at a HUGE, beautiful National park! We went on a little hiking trail by some water and it was just so unreal. The mountains are so regal that the view never gets old and take my breath away every time I struggle to see them all at one time. Will had a blast throwing rocks in the water because he has to do that at every. body. of water we see. No matter the size. ‘Oh, is that a puddle?! Let me throw some rocks in it!’ ‘Oh, is that a raging river?! Let’s throw some rocks in it!’
I did make another little movie about our adventure and please make sure you keep reading after the video so I can explain something before I get reported to some department and I lose all credibility of being a decent mom.. That said, here’s the video!
​​​​
Okay so let me explain, we did leave sleeping Will in the car, while it was running, and we were just feet away from the car to take the picture. I know I’m still going to get some heat for it but it took less than a minute, as you could tell from the poor quality of the picture because we tried to take it as fast as we could. But if I have learned anything from parenting, one things for sure is ‘you don’t wake a sleeping baby unless it’s a really good reason’ and it just wasn’t worth all the hassle of unbuckling him, waking him up, him fighting the picture and not even being happy about it then trying to wrestle him back in his car seat.
So, if you still hate me, don’t worry..karma instantly got me back. In order to take our picture, I used my selfie stick but my selfie stick wouldn’t work while my phone was in its life proof phone case, so I took it out of the case and left it on the trunk. Jack and I literally ran to the sign, took the picture, and ran back to the car so we wouldn’t be leaving Will for a long time. In the rush, I left my $80 phone case on the trunk of the car and drove off. So I was without a case and out of $80 and still feeling guilty for the minute I had William fast asleep in the car just for a picture. For that I can easily vow that my lesson has been learned thanks to instant karma.
Now back to the negatives, or lessons learned, from our trip. So I know Alaska is cold, that’s why our tent is weather proof. And I mean of course I had a huge fleece blanket for the air mattress. But never in my life have I slept outside in below 30 degree temperatures. We were miserable all night, especially Will, and very likely everyone who heard Will cry most of the night. One of the reasons we wanted to camp was so we could see the Aurora Boreallis, but man it was so cold by 11:30 that night that Jack was barely brave enough to walk around and see if he could even spot them near by our tent, but my brave, strong man did go out and look but with no luck. So we didn’t even get to see the lights.
By 5:30 AM, Will woke up again crying and Jack and I were like, “alright time to go!” And we had everything packed up in the freezing morning (there was even frost on the car) and were out of there no later than 6:30 AM. Will and I passed out in the car while Jack drove but while we were on our quick four hour drive home, we did spot a moose (the one at the end of the video) and that was the first animal I have seen in the wild since being in Alaska!
Lessons learned from this camping experiment that I made while camping:
- Bring a damn lighter and hide from Jack
- Bring some damn food, also hide from Jack
- Bring more freaking blankets. And then bring even more.
- Don’t forget about the hammer for the stakes in the tent
And most importantly:
- DONT GO CAMPING
ohwellitslife 