First Camping Trip

I love camping.  My family grew up camping at Santa Cruz every year for Memorial Day weekend . 

Aaron and I were excited when we heard our ward was doing a Labor Day ward camping trip and decided quickly that we would join in.  This also helped us keep our goal of doing a better job of getting to know our ward. 

We borrowed camping gear from my cousin AnnaMarie and headed up to Springville to meet up with the ward.

We showed up to the campsite and the first thing we noticed was that we were camping on a newly mowed lawn!  

Who leaves home, drives up the canyon, sets up a tent all to camp on a lawn?

Bizarre. But we decided to go with it.

We set up the cute little tent, mingled with ward members, made s'mores and ended the night with a fireside.  We really enjoyed getting to know everyone better and strengthened lots of friendships.

We were exhausted by the end of the night and went to hit the sack, excited for a nice night in our tent on our firm air mattress.

However, come 12 am we realized that we had not prepared adequately for this camping trip. 

We were still in summer mode and thought that the sunny daytime weather for sure guaranteed a warm night. 

Not true. 

We froze!  I haven't been that cold in a while.

We didn't bring virtually any warm clothes with us or even real sleeping bags to sleep in!

We woke up around 12 am and proceeded to put on all the clothes we had brought on the trip (jeans included) to try and survive through the night. 

Needless to say, we learned our lesson.  Long johns and sleeping bags are always needed when camping.

All in all, we loved the trip though and had fun enjoying the great outdoors (and the beautifully mowed lawn). 

I hope this means we have lots of camping trips in our future!