First Camping Trip

This past Friday we went on our first family camping trip. Jamie and I have gone camping a few times before, but this is the first time we've gone since we've had Jaden. The trip lasted a grand total of 16 hours. We figured we'd start off slow and see how it went. Right off the bat we set Jaden up for disappointment though because we told him we were going to go to the wild which immediately led him to invision scenes from "Madagascar" involving zebras, rhinos, and wierd little creatures singing songs in forests. He kept saying he wanted to look for the animals and we kept saying they were hiding. Jaden did his part of playing the wierd little creature singing songs in the forest. Unfortunately (for him) The only real animals we did encounter were the racoons that we heard scavenging around our ice chest in the middle of the night.

Some of you may know of Jamie's relationship with wild animals. He tends to view them as targets with human like personalities and regards them with the same ill will and contempt that one might hold for a criminal. You may have heard about the rat that once inhabited our apartment in Sunnyvale. Jamie would stay up night after night poised in the dark with his bb gun waiting for it to rear its head. He'd make menacing threats to this rat, promising to tie it up torture it, and sling insluts about its mother until it would beg for mercy. Or maybe you know that Jamie likes to hunt. Many a Thanksgiving have held the promise of a turkey slain at the hands of the man of the house with merely a bow and arrow.

The racoons were viewed in much the same manner. Every scamper outside of our tent kept Jamie paralyzed as he listed for and sound he could analyze with his keen tracking skills. He utlized every tool at his disposal to scare off the racoon - flashlights, clapping hands, racoon calls, always keeping himself stealthily hidden in the confines of our tent, protecting his young. I tended to take a more amused approach to the invasion - laughing to myself as I heard the racoons opening and rumaging through our ice chest. Jamie, on the other hand, muttered angrily about the "&*$% Racoon footprints all over our brand new ice chest!". The next day we inspected our food, santizing all surfaces that could have been infected by the racoons. While wiping off the outside and then the inside of the ice chest I remarked to Jamie that "at least it doesn't look like they got into any of the food". Although I meant this not as a comment on the racoons' character or ethical makeup, but more of an observation of our lucky circumstance, Jamie retorted, "Yeah, but they would have!".

We later saw a racoon ambling down a path. Jaden was really excited by it, given that it was the first real animal he'd seen during the trip. He surmised that the racoon was tired and was looking for some food. Unlike his dad, Jaden took a friendly but still human like view of the animal. "Racoon, are you hungry? Are you looking for some food? Racoon, where are you going?" Luckily, the racoon hobbled away just as Jamie pulled over and exited our vehicle....