Gone Camping - Redux

We're off for our final camping trip of the summer. This time we travel two hours east, into the Cascades, to lovely Lake Wenatchee.


We're tent camping, again, on a primitive site in Lake Wenatchee State Park. Picture me here:

That's our actual site. I imagine we'll set up our 4-person blue and grey tent in the area to the right of the table. We also have a screen-enclosed room that we'll set up over top of the table area, with some lounge chairs. That's the fire pit off to the left. And our old grey Volvo wagon will be parked in front. No doubt C's bike will be splayed around somewhere. We're not too far from the water. I've been told they have killer bugs at Wenatchee, which could be a problem for me. Put me in a room with 300 other people and set 5 mosquitoes loose on the other side of the room, I'll be the only person there with bug bites—and I'll be covered. But I'm relieved that we'll have the shelter and privacy of trees this time, so I don't expect to get blasted by relentless wind and cold like we did at Pacific Beach.

I'm taking more knitting than I possibly will be able to complete in 5 days. Already prepped to go are

• Continental Maizy Lace Socks (I just reached the heel)
• all the swatches for the Portland certificate course and conference workshop
• the shop samples of my Tweedy Cabled Cap and (still-to-be-designed) matching scarf for the classes I'm teaching in November
• 2 stealth Christmas projects
  
• an as-yet unselected new sock pattern

I just looked at that list again and realized how insane it is. Maybe I'll only bring 1 of the 2 stealth Christmas projects!

Of course, all sorts of things have come up today to make us question whether we should go at all.

First, one of our dogs had an emergency trip to the vet this morning for what turned out to be 2 really really bad infections (I won't give the gory details, but I will tell you he's not happy about wearing diapers—especially not "cute" ones with pink and blue paw prints. . . I can't say that I blame him. He's a DOG, for cryin' out loud, not a baby!) He's on 3 medications and a special prescription diet, but he'll still be accompanying us on the trip.

Second, after dinner C started complaining about not feeling well. She had me feel her forehead. Felt fine. Five minutes later, she's barfing all over the place. We're pretty sure it was a one-time thing. Maybe a strange combination of food. She has a tendency to mix orange juice with things it just wasn't meant to go with. As with the dog, she will still be accompanying us on the trip, too.

Pleasant day at our place. Full of amazing sights, sounds, and smells.

If anything goes wrong in the morning, and we believe either the dog or the child should not go camping, I will stay home with the invalid and will send J off with all others well enough to enjoy the trip. It wouldn't be the end of the world, as far as I'm concerned—it would give me a lot more dissertation-writing hours per day than I get with everyone home—but let's all cross our fingers that it doesn't happen.

So I'm hanging out the "Gone Camping" shingle until next weekend!