Of sodden, muddy boyscouts

We spent the weekend camping (unofficially) with some other tiger cub families at a lodge up in Ellijay. This was our first time in the Georgia mountains and it was quite beautiful.

We drove up on Friday night, pitched tents for the grownups, and put down bedding in a HUGE tepee for the boys.

The main occupation of the adults, for most of the weekend, was trying to remember how songs go. Branden plays the guitar beautifully -- too bad the rest of us only know the chorus to every song!

The weather was wet. It ran the gamut from damp and drizzly to thunder and lightning to torrential downpour. Despite the weather, we took the boys canoeing (thanks to Putt, canoeing skills are firmly ingrained in my being), and made fishing poles out of bamboo we cut in our yard.

Then we let the boys take turns reeling in trout (using real fishing gear).

The owner of the lodge cooked a whole pig over a fire and we all sat on the porch and sang some more, and generally had a great time. The owner of the lodge was INCREDIBLY generous for letting boys run rampant over his property, teaching them to fish, stocking the pond with fish for the boys to catch, and generally letting us create chaos in his mountain retreat.

Despite being cold and wet the boys ran around, threw rocks in the stream, played tag, chased Shadow, laughed themselves silly, hit each other with the remaining bamboo poles, got unbelievably wet and muddy, and generally acted like boys. I cannot even begin to describe how wet and muddy everyone got.

We were going to spend one more night but unfortunately the torrential downpour soaked the boys' sleeping bags so we all headed home after dinner. On Sunday night I cooked one of the trout the boys caught. YUM! My kids were VERY disappointed we left early. They spent all day Sunday complaining that they want to go back and live at the lodge. Ben's favorite part was catching a fish; Nikki loved cooking and eating the whole pig.

2 comments:

Tina in CT said...

It sounds like a fun time in spite of the rain. You'll have to go back when it's dry. It sounds like a piece of heaven for a little boy.

MoscowMom said...

HOW COOL! ***LOVE*** the tee pee!!!!