Father and Son Campout (By G)

Last weekend we had the annual ward father and son campout. What was different about this one, was that I was the father this time. That fact in and of itself is kinda surreal for me. The outing was held at Camp Meriweather outside of Tillamook. At the camp, they had places for the tent as pictured above. This was good to keep the tent off of the ground in the event of rain, but it was like sleeping on a deck. Most of my camping equipment was from the days that I was into backpacking so my camping pad only inflates to about an inch. Unfortunately, I'm not as young as I used to be and so by the time morning rolled around, I was pretty sore.

In anticipation of the campout, I bought Buddy his first sleeping bag. It was actually a pretty fun experience for me doing the research and finding something that I thought would be good for him. He stayed warm all night and actually slept really good (as evidenced by his loud breathing all night long).

We had a lot of fun with a lot of friends. We got to play on the beach, which wasn't too far from camp. We had hot dogs for dinner, smores and bisquits for dessert and pancakes and sausage for breakfast. Something about being in the great outdoors makes me hungry, so I end up eating a lot more that I do normally, which is really saying something. Buddy, I discovered, also is the same way. For example, for breakfast he had 4 pancakes and 3 sausage links. Then he continued to talk his friends into sharing their breakfast with him as well.

After breakfast, we hung out for a little while then we got everything packed up and headed with our friends to the Tillamook Cheese Factory. We had a great time looking at old cars that were on display, eating cheese samples and having ice cream. After the fun was had, we got back in the car and headed for home.

It was a really fun experience and it was good to spend some one-on-one time with Buddy. He's an amazing kid. He really enjoyed being outdoors and camping, even if he was extremely disappointed he didn't run across any bears (which he thinks is a requirement for camping). He had been looking forward to the campout for days and I think the experience mostly met his expectations. M wanted me to also take Sambo, but I told her that if I took both of the kids that she would have to choose her favorite because I likely wouldn't make it back with both.