Our First Camping Trip

We went camping at the end of Last month but we still had our old camera and so pictures of that seem to be lost also. Brian is of the opinion that I need to blog about it anyways with out pictures because it was such a fun adventure for our family.


The Ward Camping trip was to take place near the Hook van Holland. It is a good distance south of where we live. With out a car it was going to be difficult to get us and everything we needed to get there. But we had a plan. We were not going to miss this opportunity to go camping.

THE PLAN--
We were going to take only the necessities with us, Tent, bedrolls, the bare minimum because everything we took with us had to fit into our bike stroller. So it had to be small. (for a visual here is an old picture of us on a bike with the bike stroller)

Next we would ride to the train station and take our bikes and the stroller on the train. (you have to pay an extra fee for the bikes but the campsite is several miles away from the train station in the Hook van Holland so it was worth it to save the time with the bikes.)

We would grab some dinner at the train station in the Hook van Holland and then after that it was easy just follow the map and bike to the campsite, set up the tent and enjoy.

THE REAL STORY --

This is how it really happened. It started out on a calm Friday. I was at home packing up everything to get us to the Ward camp out. So I packed up everything needed to go over night with 3 small girls on a camping trip. I went to try to pack it into the bike stroller and it didn't fit.
I was breaking down in stress because I was suppose to be meeting Brian at the train station with the girls and everything at 5:00pm and it wasn't fitting. I tried to see what I could leave behind, but there was nothing I only packed what we had to have. Finally at just before 5:00pm I called Brian and told him to come home because I couldn't make this fit into the bike stroller. The bed rolls were way to fluffy, not to mention the pillows.

So Brian came home and in his normal problem solving style he stacked everything up on the stroller and tied it all down with rope. It was going to work after all. We would look a little funny riding through town with this overstuffed bike stroller but we were going to make it after all.

Happily we all got on our bikes and headed off to the train station. We were only a few minutes into our trip when Brianna decided to be frustrated with her shoe and because I wouldn't stop to let her take it off she kicked her foot in anger and it went right into my back tire. I was afraid that she had hurt her foot. But it was o.k. It hurt her but there was no permanent damage. My bike on the other hand wasn't so luckily. She managed to break 6 of my spokes and kind of bent my back tire.

Brian rapped my broken spokes around my other spokes so that we could continue to the train station but it was here that we had to abandon the plan of taking the bikes with us on the train because mine was going to be lucky to make it to our train station. Let alone make it to a campsite and back again. Never fear, I had a back up plan. Valery Reese in our ward said that if we needed when we got to the train station we could call her and they would come get us. So I had her cell number programmed into our phone for just in case and it looks like I was going to need it. And if all else fails, there was a bus that went from the train station to the campsite. I think the bus driver would give us a hard time about our stroller full of luggage but we would figure it out.

So our ride to the station was so slow and my back tire was wobbling and I was praying we could just make it there. Brian was pulling the bike stroller with the luggage behind him and he wasn't heavy enough to hold his bike down, it kept trying to flip up his back tire on him. His bike didn't appreciate being put through such hard work. We made it to the station and locked up the bikes and put the front tire on our bike stroller to make it a normal stroller.

Us and all of our luggage entered the train station and we found our train and got on it. But we got on the wrong train. It only took us to Den Haag instead of all the way to Rotterdam like we thought we were going. So we got off and went and found the correct train. We went to Rotterdam and had to make one more transfer to get to the Hook van Holland. We finally made it and got off the train at the Hook at 9:30pm. (luckily here it doesn't get dark until well after 10 more like 11 in the summer time).

Our first task was to find food because we still hadn't eaten. But in traditional Holland style all the stores were close (they close at 8:00pm at night) Usually the Train station has stores open really late but this train station was to small for that and there was nothing to eat or to feed our girls who are screaming of starvation.

We figured we better take a walk through town and see if maybe we can find a little cafe that was open. Finally after a long walk we found one open and got some fries for the girls. It was a Egyptian restaurant and although Brian and I loved the food the girls just wanted french fries, luckily everyplace here serves french fries. At this point it is 10:30pm and it is getting dark. I get out the cell phone to call the Reese's and number I programmed into my phone didn't go to the Reese's it went to some man's cell phone.. who knows who he was. I don't know what I did wrong or how this wasn't working. But it wasn't. So I told Brian we better go back to the train station and try to get on the bus. He said he looked and there were no buses that left the station going over to where we were camping. I looked at my bus information and the buses left from another station that was father away from the camp site. There were no buses at this station to take us over there.

We were left to our own two feet to try to get us there. So we kept walking through town and found the roads we needed. We looked like a bunch of homeless people walking along with our stroller all packed up the way it was.

Kaitlyn and Brianna were so tired by this point we found a way to balance them on top of all the luggage and give them a carriage ride. This is where I had taken the photo's. It was just to funny not to document. Brian pushing the stroller packed high with 2 little girls on top. I had the easy job, I was just pushing Brooke in her normal stroller. Poor Brian.

The girls fell asleep along the way which was good they needed the sleep. We managed to get to the campground shortly after midnight. Brian went searching through to find something that would look like it being our ward's camping spot. There were lots of scouts camping here, they were awake and running around and they made it easy to know those were not our wards sites. Finally Brian found one that was quite with a bunch of huge family tents. It was the only one that looked right so we snuck in at 1:00am and unloaded our stroller and put our sleeping children on the ground to sleep while we set up. Brooke on the other hand saw no need to be asleep and was yelling up a storm to let everyone know we had arrived. We were just hoping this was our wards camp site. We didn't want to wake up in the morning and be around all of these strangers.

We finally got our tent put up in the dark and all the beds made and everything was ready for sleep by 2:00am. I would have to say again I am proud of my husbands ability to set up a tent in the totally dark. He is a man of many talents.

At last we got some sleep. We were so happy to drift into this wonderful bliss to only feel like we had been there just a second when we here two boys not far from our tent yelling "Look Ducks!"... Those boys were awfully excited about those ducks. I looked at my watch to see a beautiful 6:45 am on it. The ward was awake and that was Lawry and Brison excited looking at the ducks. So up we came and crawled out of our tent to join in our ward fun and activities.

It really was a fun camp out and so worth the trouble to get there. Going home was so much easier, Jan Prins in our ward took all of our luggage in his van. Ward members offered us a ride back to the station but it was only shortly after 12:00 when everyone starting leaving and we felt like we just go there. We didn't come all this way to go home yet. So we thanked our ward members for there kind offer but told them that we really wanted to enjoy a walk through the forest. After all the ward members leave and we are off on our adventure back to the train station I realize we don't have our cell. Brian had packed it up with the tent (he didn't see it in one of the pockets, where I had put it the night before)... So we were praying our Journey home would be less eventful because we had no way of calling anyone.

To this day the cell phone still lies in that tent, I haven't gotten the courage up to go unpack the tent and dig it out.