We survived Primitive Camping

I think yesterday was our first time as a family to primitive camp....meaning you have to hike all your stuff in, and there's no running water or electricity.  It was a challenge for sure!  We decided to stay local and visit Berry Springs Preserve.  

We headed out about 4:30 Friday afternoon and quickly got going.  (We were able to cheat just a little because the park had wagons you could borrow!)  

It was a 1/3 mile hike to our campsite.  Each child was required to carry a 1 gallon jug of water along with a few other things.  This made the backpack around 10 pounds or so.  Levi wasn't having it.  He threw the biggest and baddest tantrum I've seen in years as we walked.  He worked himself up so bad that he made himself puke.  I could tell that once he did that, he thought he'd be out of the job of carrying the jug.  I guess he doesn't know me very well yet.  I told him to wipe his mouth and keep going.  He screamed like he was being slowly tortured, for the entire 1/3 mile.  It was a bit of a stressful start....but guess who learned that he could carry it all by himself.

We quickly pitched the tent and notice that everyone is back to calm.  Thirty minutes of laying silently on the picnic table while everyone else works to put up the tent, seems to calm a person down.

For dinner we had dehydrated beef stew and chicken fried rice.  Both were excellent and everyone liked them!  For entertainment we sat around the fire and stared at it for at least 1 1/2 hours.  It was wonderful...even if a few said they were bored.  I told them they were welcome to go to bed....no one wanted to.  We roasted marshmallows and were able to lessen the load by at least 25 marshmallows.

Night was okay.  No one made me get up with them to go pee so that was a win.  Unfortunately the park is pretty close to the 130 which allows speeds of 80 mph so we listened to cars whizzing down the road for most of the night.  

Time to rise and shine and make some oatmeal!

Breakfast at sunrise (much easier to do when the whole family goes to sleep at 8:30.)

Hot chocolate makes everything better.

Oatmeal by sunrise

After breakfast, it was time to pack up and hike back out.  Because we used up all the water....no tears were shed on the trip back!

Another camp out is under out belts....Shawn and I just hope that all the stuff we have to deal with,  with our kids behavior, is worth it down the road.  Hopefully the kids have good memories of these times.