Starpoint. (Camping 2024.)

We went camping last week. On our way there we drove past Starvation Road. Perhaps the bleakest street name to ever exist? Half an hour further on the town of Scofield (the only and nearest town to our little "Starpoint Campground") presented itself--looking ... bless the little town's heart ... also bleak. (Though not so bleak as to have the word starvation attached to its name. And it did have its willy-nilly smattering of run-down vacation homes surrounding the reservoir outside of town--as well as a lonely cemetery on a dry hill that I would have gladly taken an hour to wander through. Oh! And I've been remiss [acting as though the town were such a close cousin to Starvation Road]. There was also KJ's Catch N Snack. In fact, here is a family photo [wherein Cousin Maggie filled in for missing Goldie] just outside of said Catch N Snack.):

(Starling's little crossed leg in the second photo. Darling.)

In any case, what with all the "Starvation" this and rundown that--sagebrush and dirt and very little that I would truly classify as tree (a tree, in my thinking, ought to be something that can provide some small measure of shade), we were happily surprised to find our campground full of pines! (And equally full of squirrels and chipmunks.)

(Imagine eating a red vine the length of your body. My children should not have been so careless as to drop one.)

It needn't be said how much work goes into camping with a family this size. (Though, after saying "it needn't be said", I think I shall proceed to say it. ...) Coolers, and 11 little individual packs of clothes (well, 10, Mike and I shared a suitcase), 11 pillows, 11 sleeping bags, 11 camping pads, 11 camping chairs, 11 TENTS! (Oh all right. Three tents. [Though we packed a fourth just in case.]) And that's a tidy enough list, but of course there's bug spray and sunblock and garbage bags and paper towels and flashlights and ... everything else.

And do you know it isn't simply packing all of those things? Oh no. It's then unpacking them and setting them all up. And then re-packing them to bring back home. And then unpacking them again to put away--but not before unbundling them all to air out. 

And the loads of laundry. 

And everyone needing showered and bathed. 

It's ridiculous. 

Who on earth would ever camp??? Who!?

I don't know how to answer that question. "Nobody" is the obvious reply. (And one that I think to myself sporadically throughout much of the above listed packing and unpacking.) And yet ... there we were. Camping away--and even wishing that there had been 12 of everything rather than 11 (dearest Goldie). What's more I spent a fair amount of time at camp talking to Mike about where we might camp next!

Imagine.

The math. It simply does not compute.

Or I don't know. Maybe it does if you saw how happily kids made fires. And how giddy the youngest ones were over the prospect of sleeping in a tent. And if you saw how confident Anders became in his log-splitting skills. And if you heard Starling, if we ever went inside the little kitchen the Starpoint Campground boasted, moan, "I don't just want to be inside all day!" (No. She did not want to "be inside all day". That little sprite was thrilled to spend several full days completely outside.)

And did I mention there were cousins?

So. 

There we have it. Camping.

(Abe spearheaded having a large number of cousins canoe to a rocky island far out in the reservoir. It was a grand adventure. They were gone long enough to worry us. But came back blissfully unaware that they might have given anyone cause to fret--having spent a good deal of time out of their canoes leaping off these rocks just below the surface of the water.)

(Did I mention stuffed animals in my earlier lengthy packing list?)

(Lest I take too much credit: I neither set up nor took down a single tent.)

(Sodas compliments of KJ's Catch N Snack. [Can it be "compliments of" ... if we had to buy them?])

(The kids excitedly sitting in the back of the van the night before our departure for camp ... when we'd just removed the entire back seat in order to fit all our stuff. "But how did you fit all your kids then?" you wonder. Two cars my friends. Two cars. And even still I don't know how on earth the pile of things we had to bring ever fit into that space!)