White Mountain Camping

So here's the readers digest story. You'll have to actually talk to me to get the unabridged version. We left Tucson packed and ready to go later than expected around 1pm. We decided to hook up with grandma and grandpa in Mesa and all left for the white mountains at around 6:30pm. We stopped in Payson for DQ ice cream cones (my favorite part of the trip up there, thanks grandpa Nelson!). Finally arriving at our manicured campground complete with flushing toilets at around 11pm. We made our arrival known with air mattress motors and pounding in tent stakes. Everyone around sure loved us that night. Thursday night was cold and our mattress that worked just the week before on the last camping trip decided to go flat every 2 hours. Conveniently I needed to make a trip to the bathrooms about that same time and Ryan's job was to blow the mattress up by the time I got back. Friday was lovely, we toured the lake "Big Lake" and seasoned cast iron cookware. Friday night was the same as Thursday night so we had gotten really good at it! Saturday was long for me. I happened to give my self food poisoning (from chicken I cooked, or not so well cooked I think?). So trips to the bathroom were every 15 minutes between collapsing on the half blown air mattress. Everyone had rented a boat so grandma and grandpa, Ben and Megan, Eric and Taye took our kids so that Ryan could clean and pack up everything himself (bless his heart) in between getting me what ever I needed. By lunch time I was empty and figured I was safe to get in the car so we ate lunch and headed home. Tired and dirty we had lots of fun and plan on doing it again next year... minus the campground and the food poisoning.

Checkers was a big hit this time. Grandma was so smart to bring them.

Here's our set up. It looks pretty good considering that we got to our site and set up at 11:30 pm in the dark (is there any other way to set up a tent?)

My parking job needed to be documented. I have to thank my co-pilot for watching all the rocks and my fans who supported me in this endeavor. (you needed to be there)

If there was ever a picture that could be captioned "Like father, like son." this would be it!