Camping – Troop 22 Family Camp

This year’s Troop 22 Family Camp was this last weekend. We missed it last year, because we were in Disneyland. So this was the Typhoon’s first chance to go on a Family Camp. And given that we currently on a sort of hospice for our aging Akita, Akiko, we made sure to take her along for what is perhaps our last campout with the family dog.

Paulina Lake, inside the Newberry Crater, is a gorgeous alpine lake nestled into a collapsed volcanic caldera south of Bend, Oregon. Full of interesting geologic features, gorgeous views and a thriving trout population, it was a great choice for a family campout.

Last Fall, we picked up an expedition tent from Next Adventure. Not one of those classic heavy, canvas expeditions, this one (pictured below) is nylon, utilizing a tent/rainfly construction and based on four huge poles that create a cavernous barrel-shaped interior. From end-to-end, this tent is over twenty feet long and divided into two sections. The smaller front section is called a ‘porch’. Lots of windows and a panorama view would make for a great place to hang out bug-free. The larger, more private section has room to sleep all four of us, plus the dog.

So, its a nice tent for comfortable car camping. Ideal for Badasht and for the family camp.  Sharp-eyed readers will notice that the rain fly does not completely shade the ends of the tent. Not a problem for summer showers and the like, but a design weakness for prolonged rain.

Now, central Oregon in June is predictably pleasant. Campers can expect sunny weather interrupted maybe by a thundershower. So the irony should be evident that it came to pass that we experienced a series of thundershowers, followed by a weather front that rained about an inch on us between Friday dinner and early Sunday morning. The rain wasn’t constant, but it did indeed rain more than not.

Saturday morning, while it rained a bit, R had the first Board of Review of his scouting career. For those who don’t know, a Board of Review (BoR) is the last step to achieving a new rank in scouting. Three adults hold an interview with the scout, verify not only that he both accomplished each requirement, but also to test his understanding of what he did, and his overall poise. Pass the BoR, and the scout advances in rank. Fail the BoR, and the scout must wait a short period of time and try again. R went into his first BoR with a rank of Scout (lowest). His BoR simultaneously passed him on Tenderfoot and Second Class ranks….two ranks in one sitting. Nice!

So the Typhoon was in high spirits mid-day, when the weather broke enough for the troop to hike one-mile from the campground to an impressive lava flow chock-full of Obsidian. This photo gives a lay of the land.

Paulina Lake is on the extreme left of the photo; with East lake in the background. Our campsite would be on the closest edge of Paulina Lake, just at the edge of the photo. The lava flow is the gray region throughout the center.

About the time we got back to the campsite, it started raining again, with that steady pelt-pelt of a rainstorm that doesn’t plan to end any time soon. So we had made good use of the break in the weather for the side trip.

Afternoon play activities did NOT stop for the rain. There was just no sensible way to keep those boys and their siblings cooped up in their respective tents while it rained. A pack of 25 rain-soaked kids was a foregone conclusion. No big deal as long as there’s one dry set of clothing and a dry tent to return to…

Saturday night’s social activity was a troop wide chili cook-off. We all had a lot of fun with that, and the chili all turned out wonderfully. Lots of good team-building and bonding took place. Of course part of the bonding was because we all had to huddle under the cooking fly shelters to escape the heavy rain from the weather front that settled over us.

Everyone ate, everyone got wet, some were soaked. Typhoon children were among the soaked. I was somewhere in the middle of helping with kitchen cleanup, when C let me know that her after-dinner tent inspection showed significant leaks from the zippers and seams on both ends of our tent. While we didn’t have water running through our tent area (drainage rivulets had started to appear all over camp by now), there was definitely a steady drip-drip-drip onto the floor. The rainfly was doing its job; the leaks were only from the uncovered ends of the tent. So that was a good news / bad news situation. Seam sealer would fix the leaks, but we’d have to get through tonight without it.

Except that C’s inspection found that an unspecified child in the family had unzipped some of the covers over the porch screens, opening the windows and letting the rain come in unabated, soaking the dry change of clothes, sleeping pads and the feet of the childrens’ sleeping bags.

Ugh.

So it came as no surprise that, at this very moment, both children appeared, overwhelmed suddenly by the cold wet condition of their clothes, near tears, begging for us parents to suddenly make them warm, dry and happy again.

There is just no good way to break the news to two soaked, shivering children that they’d been a bit negligent with the tent and, as a result, the dry and warm belongings they were depending upon were now wet and cold. It wasn’t a pretty exchange. There was some discussion of breaking camp right then. I said a firm ‘no’. We weren’t the only family having that talk at about that time. One family did leave then; their backpacking-style tents were leaking significantly and all their belongings were dripping-wet soaked.

The mitigation process took some coordinated teamwork . C directed the re-arranging of the tent’s insides, while I stood in the rain, protected by my Gore-tex rain coat, holding shoes and clothes up to the fire until the drying process reached an equilibrium with the rain still falling on the wet items. When we’d finished, we had four functional sleeping bags, two kids in dry pajamas inside those bags, and a merely damp dog lying on her dog bed covered by a dry car blanket.

For most of her life, the idea of putting a blanket over Aki was just plain impractical. That night, however, it was different. The moment I put that blanket over Aki, she gave me a look of appreciation like none I’ve ever seen before. Normally she moves around overnight, finding a couple places to sleep besides on her dog bed. This time, she stayed put. Seven hours later, the blanket was still in place with just her muzzle poking out. Just as I left her; she didn’t move a muscle.

Once we finally got everyont tucked into bed, it was M who was the first to fall asleep. C and I spent an hour or so with R, the new Second Class scout, listening to the rain outside, debriefing everything that went on during the day. It turned out that he was the one who left the tent windows open. He felt terrible about it. We talked about learning lessons the hard way. Both C and I had camping-in-the-rain stories to tell that out-did R’s lessons of the day. It made him feel better to know that we didn’t judge him harshly for his mistakes, and it helped him better understand that the guidance we give him on how to be successful is based upon our own personal experience. He’s increasingly learning that listening to experienced elders will save him the discomfort of learning the painful lesson for himself.

Everyone slept okay. Nobody was uncomfortably cold overnight. The rain stopped sometime after midnight, leaving us a damp, misty Sunday morning with raindrops still dripping from the trees overhead. At 7am revile, half the camp was already packed up. Everyone was uncomfortable and ready to get warm. Not a single person seemed inclined to linger longer than needed. The big-event Sunday breakfast was cancelled and by 8:30am, we were on the road. We had a soaked tent, a 30 gallon trashbag full of soaked clothes, a damp dog, and two cold kids as we rolled out, heater going full blast. As quickly as we got packed up and on the road, we weren’t the first family out. Others skedaddled like they were running from a forest fire.

Half an hour of drying time in the car, and everyone’s spirits were on the rise. We stopped for a big hot breakfast at the Black Bear Diner in Madras. Full stomachs finished off the recovery.

By 2pm, we were home and unpacking the car.

By 4PM, sleeping bags were already fluffed dry. The tent was set up in the backyard, ready for seam sealer.

By dinner time Sunday, the sun had dried the tent, and R and I had applied five tubes worth of seam sealer to the miles of stitches in our massive cathedral of a tent.  It’s going to be dry in the future, I can tell you that.

So it was quite a trip. A lot of lessons learned. I’m glad we went.