I camped a little when I was younger, but it wasn’t “real” camping.  My family only “horse camped” a couple times;  as in, my parents trailered our horses to a camp ground [with running water and toilets] in the beautifully woodsy part of Michigan, so that my sister and I could trail-ride with the other kids in our 4-H group.  My horse hated trail riding, and I was young enough that I couldn’t quite control her when she decided she was over it.  Sometimes I rode a friend’s horse that was easier on trails, but after that horse decided to [quite spontaneously] lay down in the middle of the trail and ROLL, I was done.  I had to bail as soon as she went down, and was instructed to kick her in the ribs repeatedly until she got back up.  What a way to trail ride… [eye roll].  Needless to say, I hated horse camping [or maybe camping in general.]

I was re-introduced to camping MANY years later with a one-time experience the summer after my freshman year of college.  I was living in Northern Colorado for the summer, and was invited by a co-worker to tag along on her camping trip an hour into the mountains.  It was a weekend of beers [sorry mom], learning to yield an axe [which I did “like a girl,” if you will], stargazing in a truck bed, and exploring caves in the middle of the night.  Camping was all-around beautiful!

I was never invited to go camping again until June of 2014 by a new boyfriend who didn’t know I was probably too girly to live in the woods for 24 hours.  I mean, I didn’t think I was too girly… but it sure says something about you when all of your friends are SHOCKED that you even want to try camping.

I think he wants to take me camping!   Really?!  You want to camp?
Why does that surprise you?   Because…it’s you.
What does that mean?   You curl your hair, and never go anywhere without makeup.  Do you own anything that you’re okay with getting dirty?
Oh…yeah.  Okay, I’m nervous.

So I bought a “camping outfit,” and enjoyed one night in the mountains with my new beau.  I took a million pictures.  It was FREEZING overnight, with so much wind the tent nearly came down on us.  We forgot to pack SO many items, we started making a list of everything we actually needed, but didn’t have with us…and it took up an entire sheet of lined paper.  I LOVED it!

Now that it’s camping season again for 2015, I’m THRILLED that the camping trips have started back up!

This past weekend was our first camping weekend of the year, and our first-ever camping trip with the new pup.  Kenai did great, of course…because she is perfect.  And looked adorable the whole time [of course…because she’s adorable].

The weekend in general was great!  We made good food over the campfire.  Drank yummy beer.  Had beautiful weather + conversation.  And thought we found gold!  Yeah… we even tried to “pan” it in our cooking dishes.  [feel free to laugh out loud, like I am right now.]  We are now sure that it wasn’t the real stuff, but it was a LOT of fun playing in the creek!  And we camped in my favorite area of Colorado, where my camping life was re-imagined during last summer’s adventures.