Camping, pt 2

I awaken early Saturday morning, before anyone else is up. As I crawl/stumble from my tent and I look around and I see this. Our family's tent city. That's a lot of people. I get some hot water started for the coffee press and the tea pot and other random items and grab a quilt and a book and settle in for a while. I saw some deer while I was reading, just standing in the tree line watching me watch them. It was so peaceful....until THEY start waking up. Mom first, heading straight for the kitchen to start getting breakfast cooking. Then Dad, and before you know it the air is filled with the unmistakable sound of tent zippers being unzipped. One after the other, people are stumbling out of tents in their jammies or the clothes they slept in, rubbing their eyes and looking confused. They wander over to the circle of chairs and plop down, grunting morning greetings. So much for my book.

By this time, Dad is in the kitchen, stationed by the big griddle cooking sausage enough to feed an army, and Mom is giving orders to the rest of us to get us organized and awake enough to eat. The call goes out that pancakes are ready and we all get in line to go through the "chow hall". 2 pancakes a piece, they say, until everyone has eaten. Well, Andy got 3 which led us all to believe that Grandma loves him best.

After breakfast was done, a group of us decided to go for a walk up to the nature center which is about a mile and a half. We headed off up the road, about 6 of us ambling along. We wandered through the nature center and looked at all the displays and the books in the gift shop, but no one wanted to head back yet. We decided to walk another mile out through the woods to Buffalo Springs. The springs in Sulpher, Oklahoma are made of water that bubbles up through the ground from artesian wells. The CCC (Civilian Conservation Corp) was hired and trained in the 20's to do stone masonry and built all the structures at the park where we were camping. It's very pretty. We sat and dangled our feet and decided that the best plan would be to wait until 11:30 and head back and we'd hit the campsite about lunchtime and it would all be ready for us. The plan was a good one, but we ran into the Grands at the Nature Center, so obviously, lunch was not being prepared.

When we got back to the campsite, another group had shown up. My sister's oldest son and his wife and 2 children. That was a surprise, and a really nice one. I haven't seen them since their 2 year old was only 4 months. After lunch, we all decided to go swimming up at "Little Niagara", a swimming hole up the way. We all piled into the back of the truck and drove up. The water was so cold! Like, almost stop your heart cold, but it did feel good. We messed around and swam and wrestled and waded and found a stone "slide" at one of the shallower falls and just in general had a great time. Ooops...now it's time to eat again. Back to the campsite for more food. My great niece comes up with a new game during dinner "Pickle, pickle, pineapple head" which is our take on "duck, duck, goose". It's hard to play while you're eating, but fun anyway. Cleanup commences and the fire is lit. S'mores fixins break out again and then my nephew turns to me and says "What are we doing tonight?". Well, it's dark, in the woods, so we decided to go on a "night hike". These hikes have become infamous with our group, but they're always fun and interesting. My son suggests a place that I've never been to and it's easy to find, so off we go, 14 of us wandering down the road. We find the spot where we're heading in record time, and it's too early to go back so we wander around for a while until someone suggests taking the "scenic route" back. That means there's a path through the woods from the bridge back to our campsite. It's easy! You just follow the path! So we head off down the path through the woods. The full moon is beautiful and the critters are out. All is well until we come to a fork in the road. Hmmm. No one said anything about a fork in the road. So we pick the right fork. That would be the wrong fork. Of course we don't realize that until about a mile and a half later. By this time, a small group of 6 has broken off and run ahead to hide and lie in wait for the rest of us to jump out and scare us. That would have worked unless we were to come across ANOTHER fork in the path and we took different forks, which is what we did. At this point, half the group is acting like we've been lost in the wilderness for 40 days and we come across a sign that says "nature center, that way". Another mile to go, but we have a cell phone with us and we can call Grampa to come pick us up. Finally hit the nature center which is great, except the bathrooms are locked. Finally get a signal on the cell phone and call Grampa, who can hardly agree to come get us because he's laughing so hard. He shows up in his van about 10 minute later and we pile in the back. My sister finds all the chocolate goodies that have NOT been brought out for mealtimes and snacks and we tear into that stuff like crazy monkeys. Wrappers flying everywhere, boxes and bags being traded up and down the line. Of course, we didn't touch the Weight Watchers stuff. As we're driving back up to the campsite, we pass the rest of our group and wave and tell dad to gun it so we can beat them back to the site. He doesn't, of course, and they haul ass and actually get back before we can pile out of the van. A good time was had by all.