{pretty, happy, funny, real} ~ that time we went camping but not in a tornado.
What is this {pretty, happy, funny, real} you speak of?
~ {pretty, happy, funny, real} ~
Capturing the context of contentment in everyday life ~
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Over the weekend, we went on a little adventure to the Chickasaw National Recreation Area, a few hours from here in south-central Oklahoma. We’d never been there before, and didn’t know much about it — we basically just tried to find the prettiest-looking place to spend a few nights camping that wouldn’t require us to drive too far. We rented a camper trailer from the adventure center on base, which was a fun way to try it out (we periodically throw around the idea of getting one of our own and fixing it up) and to get to do the camping thing without having to actually do the sleeping on the ground thing.
The plan was to leave on Friday, but there were severe storms rolling through that afternoon, and it doesn’t take much of a tornado threat to convince me to stay in my house instead of getting into a travel trailer and driving out of cell phone range.
So it ended up just being one night — a shorter trip than we’d planned, but still a lot of fun.
The weather was perfect, and the park we stayed in was just beautiful. I would’ve liked to have more time to explore, but even the little we saw was amazing. (This is sounding like a sponsored post. It’s not.)
The rivers and streams were so clear — I don’t know if I’ve ever seen anything like them. After Mass on Sunday we hiked to one of the springs that feeds the streams. (And by “hiked,” I mean walked along the wide gravelly path the half-mile or so that it took to get there. It was just our speed.)
It was most satisfyingly spring-like, with the water just pouring right out of the rock. As if, as my husband said, Moses had struck it with his staff.
The camping itself went about as well as we could have hoped — we did get some sleep, and the kids, naturally, had a great time. We were pretty sure they would, no matter what happened. There aren’t many camping hiccups that can’t be fixed with a s’more. (The ones I can think of are being eaten by a bear and being blown away in a tornado, both of which we cleverly avoided.)
It also helped everyone’s spirits that our actual campsite,in addition to being clean and quiet, was neatly edged with rocks and covered in gravel. There were cute little lizards living nearby, and I’m not sure what it is about gravel, but all three of our kids love to play in it, and eating gravel is one of Nora’s very favorite things in the world. She picks up a little piece and pops it in her mouth when I’m not looking. She just keeps it in there until I notice, fish it out, and chastise her. Then she toddles off and surreptitiously sneaks another one. To the best of my knowledge, she has never swallowed any (or choked on it, for that matter), but still. Babies just have no standards, do they?
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