Ah, the great outdoors....

Ahh... the sun's shining, the birds are singing...


And the Emersons' are camping.

So after work on Friday, we packed our gear and headed up to Lincoln park to camp our little hearts out. Actually, it was Mike's heart that wanted to camp. Mine wanted to be at home watching CSI, painting my toenails. I cannot stress enough that I am soooo not a camper. Or an outdoorsy type person at all, really. The only reason I was going on this trip was to appease my husband.

That being said, I didn't really have that bad of a time.

But we didn't have that great of a time either...

The possible reasons?

1. As we were unpacking the stuff at our campsite, we realized Mike forgot to load up our clothes in the jeep. Crap.

2. Deciding we could make do without our clothes for a couple days, we continued to unload the car. We shortly realize that Mike also forgot to pack all of the blankets. Double crap.

3. An hour's round trip driving home and back to get said clothes and blankets and some forgotten firewood, I cooked dinner with one knife and a plastic fork by lantern light.

4. As we were a bit tipsy that evening, we decided to go to bed and didn't think to put all of the food up properly. We found out that raccoons like chocolate. Alot. Needless to say, no smores for us.



5. At breakfast, I made an oh so delicious omelet that I promptly dropped on the ground. I scraped the top part up and ate it anyways.




5. It was hot, Don. Very very hot. Why is it 90 degrees in October? Why?

Despite a few (well, a more than a few) setbacks, and my pre-established feelings about camping, we did enjoy ourselves. We cooked a great campfire dinner on Friday and had a great time just talking, reading and relaxing. We brought Scout, who had the best time in the world. I think she thought she was in doggie heaven. It was fun to watch her sniff and romp around. We went on a hike on Saturday and sat by the lake for a while. It was really really nice.



But in the end, the heat got us. We were hot and miserable. We were ready to go home.



Even Scout was.



So we packed up and hightailed it home where we lounged on the couch like slugs the rest of the afternoon.

Not horrible. But I don't think I'm ready to go back and do it again anytime soon...