Weekend Wrap Up

Our much anticipated camping weekend didn't quite turn out the way that we had expected. The way that things were SUPPOSED to go was that we showed up to our campground, got this specific site that's right down by the lake and backs right up to our intended hiking trail. We were going to spend Friday playing around in the lake and I even went out and bought a two person raft for playing in that I figured was big enough to fit me and one of the dogs. Then Saturday we were going to spend the majority of the day hiking. Saturday evening and Sunday morning were going to be for basically just chilling around the campsite. Pretty much the perfect weekend. I should have known that the plan was a little too perfect to actually get pulled off.

As we were approaching the turn off for our campground (a mere five miles away!), we noticed that there was a sheriff's car blocking the road. Hmmmm....that can't be a good sign. I was hoping that it was something minor and maybe we'd have to pull over a wait a bit for something to clear up. No such luck. Apparently there was a missing hiker in the area and they were doing a search and rescue mission. Therefore, the whole area was essentially in lock down and no one was allowed in. Super (don't get me wrong, I know it's awful to have someone missing, but I was kind of feeling like it would also be helpful to have extra people about who are aware of the missing person and could also be on the lookout for him. Especially since some of these extra people have two giant dogs.)!

We back tracked to the next closest campground and decided to set up shop there. When we first got there, there weren't any other dogs so I just let the dogs kind of run amok. Except that they were pretty pent up and nosy. It's difficult to set up tents and camping gear with two giant and obnoxious goobers running around. Thankfully, I had thought ahead and we brought our x-pens!!
After the tent was pretty much set up, I left the group to take the dogs down to the creek that was behind our campsite so that they could cool off a bit.

And let me tell you, that water was not just cold, but frigid!! It's a mountain stream, so you would figure it would be cold. But there's cold, and then there's this. It was that kind of cold that just makes your feet ache right through the bone. There most definitely was NOT going to be any swimming or lounging in this water. While we were hanging out there I noticed a couple with a little cavalier kind charles spaniel that was off leash. So I gathered the dogs up and headed back to camp. The dogs hadn't noticed the little dog, but I didn't want either of mine to bum rush her. Well, the people followed us back to our campsite. They weren't there camping, just looking around. As they came through our campsite (I had both dogs on leash), Adam warned them that Heffner isn't terribly fond of a lot of other dogs. The guys response was, "oh well, she's in heat right now so he should like her plenty." ARG!!! That really annoyed me. I pretty rudely said, no, he still won't like her. First of all, when someone warns you that their dog isn't friendly, take that warning. They are warning you for the benefit of your own dog. While that dog may not be outwardly acting at all like it's not friendly, be thankful that the owner not only has enough control of their own dog to prevent that, but also be thankful that they're warning you. Especially when there is such a size differential that it wouldn't take much for such a giant dog to do any harm to such a small dog. Secondly, if your bitch is in season, do NOT have her walking through someone else's campsite!! Are you kidding me??? How stupid can you be??? I don't need random coyotes and whatever else in those woods sniffing around our campsite and riling up my dogs because you let your in season bitch drip her delicious smelling juices all over the place!>:o( Not only that, but with a dog that small, that's a really great way to get your dog flat out killed by any number of things that are running around in the woods. People really don't stop to think about these things and it drives me nuts sometimes!!

After they left, Adam finished setting up the x-pens around the tent so that the dogs could go in and out of the tent to lay down or roam around in their "yard." I'm also totally in love with our tent (another Costco buy!)! It has an exterior room that is perfect for the dogs. They can have an area to go to that's protected where we can lay their beds that doesn't involve our stuff getting trompled on! While they weren't entirely thrilled at getting locked up again, it was better than the individual pens on the dirt.



Unfortunately, there weren't any trails leading any where in our campground. And since it was a relatively small campground that led out onto the main road, it didn't leave us a whole lot of options as far as walking the dogs or places to take them to let them run around off leash. We figured that we would just find some where to go in the morning and settled in for a fun evening of relaxing and watching the fire. Adam had made some yummy strawberry infused rum that made for some wonderful drinks! Thankfully the rum was pretty weak, so I could drink a lot of the delicious drinks!:)

As the night wore on, clouds started rolling in. We weren't too concerned because the forecast for the weekend showed it being overcast. But then the rain started. And stopped. And then the thunder and lightning began! I will again state here that I am very thankful that neither of the dogs have issues with thunder and lightning. The pretty much slept through all of it. After a while, it became obvious that the rain wasn't going to let up. We doused the fire and retired to our individual tents. Even though it was still relatively warm out, I put nice winter coats on both of the dogs for the night. I knew that it was going to get cold over night and I didn't want them shivering.

All went well throughout the night and the dogs got me up at about 6:30am because they needed a potty break. That was pretty quick and then I went back to sleep for a little bit longer. By the time that all of us were up and eating breakfast, we decided that we would pack up the camp (Jeremy and Tilly were only planning on staying one night anyhow, and we decided that there just wasn't enough to do to warrant us staying another night), and go looking for some hiking. Of course, eating breakfast and getting the camp packed up took a fair bit longer than expected. I don't think we actually left the campgrounds until 12:30pm. At that point, it was getting pretty warm. And I managed to tweak my knee somehow and that was getting pretty sore. And Adam had tweaked his ankle. And Heffner had gotten bitten by something and both his back feet had swollen lumps on them, in addition to him acting like his front feet were a little sore. We opted out of the hike and decided to just head home.

So there you have it. We actually got home yesterday, but I've been doing a whole lot of laundry (it's amazing how much stuff gets dirty/smoke covered in just one night of camping) and some other things since them. I was pretty bummed that things hadn't worked out the way that we had originally planned it, but I think I'm going to try for a make-up camping in September if I can get it to work with my schedule.

I did have a bit of time yesterday that I spent compiling random video clips that I had taken of the dogs during the month of July! There's always those random snippets that I capture that don't really fit with anything else, so I hadn't bothered uploading them or doing anything with them. So I figured that I would just smush them together into one video and see what happened! I think I actually kind of like it and it gives me more incentive for doing more random video captures of the dogs. I'm going to try to do this on a monthly basis. Here's the video from July.