Camping. With a one year old.

A little daddy-daughter hammock time.  “Whee” she kept saying!

Yup.  We did it… and we lived to tell about it!  We’ve been wanting to go for quite some time, actually, and we finally made it happen for Cody’s birthday.  The big 4-0.  How did he spend the evening before his big day?  Turning the hand crank on an ancient ice cream freezer that he rebuilt – all to produce way more ice cream than he and I could eat.  But man, it was good!!  But, that was just a small part of the trip.  I must begin at the beginning.

We set out Thursday just before lunch, ate lunch in Hondo and stopped at Walmart to get a few last  minute necessities.  Then stopped at HEB because it’s perfectly logical that the tiniest HEB ever built would have tons of firewood for sale when the Walmart SuperCenter for all of Medina County was sold out.  But hey, it’s Texas!  Thank God for HEB!  We had a campfire. 🙂

When we arrived at Garner State Park, they told us basically we had the pick of most of the spots in the place – with only about 50 folks camping that night.  So, we drove around and settled on our perfect spot.  (And it really was perfect, ya’ll.  If only it hadn’t been for all the rocks that our dear, sweet little toddler kept tripping on and falling…  Lots of tears.  LOTS of tears.)

Got the tent set up in record time, and we were relaxing in no time.  It really was a wonderful trip.  Becca saw lots of “burts” (birds), mommy and daddy chased off a few too-friendly skunks, and the only casualty of the entire trip was a loaf of bread that mistakenly got left out when we went for our walk.  Oops.  My bad.  Thankfully the little camp store had another loaf of bread.  Because when the birds/skunks/squirrels/whatever-they-were were done with the bread, we weren’t going to be eating any of it.  The goldfish crackers were also a casualty.  Oh well.  That’s life.

Becca loved roaming around, and even took her daddy on a little hike Friday morning!  She was all about tromping around, digging in the dirt, putting leaves and sticks in her little tote bag, and just generally being outside.  She’s an outdoorsy sort of gal.  Thankfully her allergies cooperated through the entire endeavor!

It was the cutest thing ever watching her lead him off to the trail and up the hill, George tagging along, of course.  Nothing quite catches my breath like the site of these two together.

All in all, it was a fabulous trip.  We know a few things we’ll do differently next time, but the best part is – after this experience, there will still be a next time!  🙂  And when we add new little Hinnants to the clan at some point, I don’t think we’ll be so hesitant to take them out to camp earlier in life.  I’m not really sure why we waited this long with her.  Next time we go, we may need a rope to keep her from running up into the hills!  HA!