We just got back from our annual camping trip to the desert to see the Perseids meteor shower. Confession, we still aren’t unpacked, but I am too tired to unpack the “blob” which we’ve named Toothless, since it looks like the head of the dragon from How to Train Your Dragon… but not too tired to post about the trip.
And I wanted to post about the trip before I crash because I know that if I don’t write about it now it might take forever to write about or it won’t get done, which is why I’m still writing about my trip to Rhodes a month later, and why I never got around to writing about our frugal family trip to Italy last November… though I do hope to eventually write about it…
After my friend read on the internet that the whole world and their mother planned on going to see the meteor shower in the desert crater where we have been going (with barely any other families at the campsite), we decided to travel there early to snag a camp site before it filled up. This meant that we got there during the heat of the day, which led to the first of our snafu:
Because space was at a premium in our cars, we didn’t go overboard with bottles of water… but then we underestimated how much water we needed, especially in light of the fact that getting there during the heat of the day meant we needed to drink much more water… so we ended up needing to drive to the closest gas station, about 45 minutes round trip, to buy another 6 pack of water, and even then we nearly finished the water by the time we left in the morning. Next time, if we go in the same car again, we’ll stuff the car even more, even if we need to put the bottles of water under our feet, but we definitely need to bring more water with us.
Once we arrived at the camp site and set up, to cool off, we left half the people at the camp site to watch our stuff, and took the other car to the gas station to get everyone ice cream, then came back and took the next load of people to the gas station to get ice cream. (The air conditioner in the car on the way to the gas station was a bonus.)
My son bought a portable yet strong fan that sprayed water for his girlfriend which helped them stay cool in the heat- if we come again during the heat of the day I’ll buy a few more of those so everyone has one since it worked really well.
We didn’t test the air mattresses before we came and three!!! ended up having a hole in them; we brought an extra air mattress so one that we discovered earlier on in the evening was deflating we were able to take care of earlier on- when my friend went to buy more water, she checked and the gas station also sold an air mattress, which she bought (and it wasn’t being sold for a fortune, surprisingly!!!). The third deflated one was only discovered as everyone was going to bed, and my friend and her kids generously offered to squish onto a larger air mattress and lent one of their air mattresses to my kids, so everyone was able to sleep comfortably!
Despite the heat, it was great we came early. The place kept filling up and filling up. The cleared circles with fire pits were taken very quickly, and in fact, when our neighbor went to search for firewood, a rude family with two trucks decided to pull into their camp site and set up two tents right inside their cleared circle, which was very not nice.
There was a wide open area, like a parking lot, that ended up getting filled with what seemed like hundreds of cars, each with tents next to them, or spread onto the nearby rocky area. It was like a tent city. We were worried it would be so noisy and bright with all the people there, but fortunately everyone came to experience the same meteor shower, so it was pleasantly dark and not too noisy despite the crowds.
As we drove back and forth to the gas station, we saw that the cars and tents extended far beyond the camp grounds. The entire dirt road from the main road was lined with hundreds more cars and tents. I’ve never seen the middle of nowhere so packed with people! There were lines of cars just coming and coming and traffic jams into and out of the camp ground. All night long, and even at 5 in the morning when I went out to the gas station to pee.
More on that in a minute.
Since we arrived early enough, we were able to set up the grill and cook the food before it got dark, something we never managed to do until this year; yay for something we got right this year.
Another flop- I misunderstood my friend and thought she was bringing aluminum pans, but I was in charge of disposables (oops) so we didn’t have any containers in which to put the grilled food. Fortunately, we brought lots of disposable plates so we had where to put the food. But it took lots and lots of plates. Because we made a lot of food.
Food we made:
Hot dogs.
Kebabs.
Burgers.
Chicken wings. I literally just put salt on them and put some water over the charcoal as they were cooking since they were still partially frozen when cooking so I didn’t want them to cook to quickly, so they ended up smoking, but I got so many compliments on how good they were…
Corn on the cob.
Grilled zucchini slices.
Halved onions (I kept the ends together and just peeled the outside- they held together beautifully and grilled amazingly this way.)
The other big problem we had with the food was wasps. There we so many wasps that wanted our food that it was scary getting the food and eating it. We need to figure out a solution to the wasp issue for next year- if anyone has any suggestions I’m all ears.
While the food was cooking, the kids climbed the nearby mountain. I’ve honestly never done it but it’s the kids’ tradition. They took this picture of just some of the cars in the campsite below when they climbed up. (I don’t know if this picture was taken in the evening when they climbed up or in the morning when they climbed up again, but this was not as full as it got- it was the most full in the middle of the night but cleared out pretty early in the morning.
Park rangers came over to us to tell us that our dog needed to be tied up because of the wild animals in the area; this is our 6th time camping and first time we’ve seen any park rangers and first time we were told we needed to tie up our dog. Fortunately I had some really long rope in my car (something I always keep there) which I was able to tie onto the car handle and my dog was able to wander around quite far but still be tied up. Rope will be on our list for next year, just to make sure that we have it in case there isn’t any in the car.
Night in the desert was glorious, as usual. It is pitch dark, with no light pollution, so you can see everything, including the Milky Way. You can see it in this amazing picture my friend took of their tent.
Since it was the peak of the meteor shower (I back date posts on my blog, so writing the actual date here so you know- it was August 12th) we could see so many meteors. You see the most after 10 pm, but we saw more before then. But seeing a lot doesn’t mean multiple a minute. You lie on your back looking up at the sky and you’ll see a couple an hour. I wasn’t looking up every second, but I saw about 10 in the roughly 2 hours before I fell asleep.
Each time there was a shooting star, you’d hear the collective oohs and ahhs from around the camp site- that was one perk of there being so many people there- sharing the wonder together.
The down side, other than the traffic jams, and the crowdedness both at the site and at the gas station bathrooms (again, bringing that up)- the camp site where we go to has no bathrooms. This usually is not an issue. You find an empty area to go answer nature’s call. Only this time there was no empty area. Everywhere you went there were people. At all times of the night. At 5 am when I woke up I thought that I might be able to pee discreetly not so far from the camp site, but then I saw that even at that ungodly hour there were people everywhere. The only time it was dark enough to be able to pee without the world seeing you was at 1 am, because you could find an area that was a little distant from the camp sites (and visible from them during the day but not at 1 am), but that’s about it.
So basically, any time someone had to use the bathroom, we’d load up the car and take whoever needed and might need in the near future, and drive the 45 minute to hour round trip… because there were long lines for the bathroom because everyone else was doing the same…
My friend and I decided that any future camping trips will not be done at peak because of how crowded it is- even if you can see the most shooting stars it isn’t worth the inconvenience. However… maybe if I had a pop up privacy tent I’d be able to pee in peace even with all the crowds…
In the morning, we had a hard time closing up the pop up tents. They are super easy to pop open, but the challenge is getting them closed afterwards. It took us multiple tries, but even after we got them closed and into their first circle zip up bag, there is a smaller zip up bag that you’re supposed to fold it up and fit it into but we were unable to do that despite trying time and time again. If anyone has any hints or advice, we’ll gladly take it. For now, we’re glad that the tent in its larger folded form fit just fine in Toothless, the blob.
All in all, it was a successful camping trip, even with the problems. And the problems just mean we can learn more for next time.
