Adventures in Camping

The weekend of June 21 - 23, Graham experienced his first camping adventure. And oh, what an adventure it was. 

We traveled to Lanesboro, MN (a 6 hour drive from Fargo) for a family reunion on the Paukert side. It was a hot, muggy weekend -- and a stormy one too. Friday night we endured a full-on thunderstorm. In a tent. With a 3 month old. The good news is that Graham did great. He slept through the first aggressive round at 2:00 a.m. Then when another bout rolled through at 3:30 he woke up but only because Aaron and I were scouring the tent with flashlights looking for leaks. In the midst of my panic and fear, it was comic relief to look at Graham in his Pack 'n Play just smiling away, looking around with total enthusiasm. Ignorance really is bliss. 

Morning finally came and we debriefed with fellow reunionites over breakfast. It's fair to say that no one got a good night sleep on Friday. If only we knew what Saturday would bring... 

Lucky for us, Gandma Ange had a hotel room with an extra bed about 10 miles away which gave us an option to debate over all day Saturday. All we knew was that if there was even a chance of storms again on Saturday, we were outta there. 

So at 9:00 p.m. when the radar finally showed "red coming" we packed up camp and hit the road for a place to sleep that included a roof. And thank goodness we did. In the middle of the night we learned that our campground flash flooded and everyone evacuated at 3:00 a.m.! It had been bad enough on Friday night to endure the storms with a baby. I seriously can't imagine if we'd had to evacuate at 3:00 a.m. 

Here is the campground as we saw it on Friday night. 

And here is the after.

The road had eroded and everything was under water. One lone camper remains, I'm sure with plenty of damage and some unhappy owners.

So we haven't exactly booked our next camping trip. I know there will be more and I know they won't all include flash flooding and campground evacuations. But for now we're staying home and staying dry. Graham agrees that this is a good plan.