Seven years in the making…

So with apologies to my dad and our Boy Scout camping trips, Friday night was seven years in the making.

Seven years ago a good friend had the idea of going backpacking in the Gila National Forest.  I had never been backpacking before, but of course I was in. And since this isnt a post about that trip I will keep it short. We decided to head out and it was a pretty eye-opening experience.  I was hooked. Here is a video from that trip:

Fast forward one year and for a bachelor party we decided to repell off a 240 foot waterfall (Hemmed-in-Hollow - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hemmed-In-Hollow_Falls). Here is myself headed off the cliff for a 270 foot repell:

Fast forward one more year and I headed off to Patagonia with NOLS to learn glacial moutaineering. Here is a quick video from one of our summit hikes in Patagonia:

One last video, if you recall I kayaked the Buffalo River with my brother-in-law  and it kind of got out of hand.  Here is a video of the Buffalo well into flood stage and what could have been a very bad situation if we hadn’t seen this downed tree in time:

Those were some great trips, but I took my favorite camping trip this weekend.  I took B on his first camp-out.

B and I went with a good friend and his daughter who is one month younger than B.

Here we are at the campsite:

We decided to take the kiddos on a hike to try and wear them out:

Mission accomplished:

So my tent has two flaps on it, I needed to secure the zippers in case B decided to break camp in the middle of the night, here is one flap:

The other flap zippers had my watch looped through them, I was able to sleep soundly knowing that he would have to navigate a watch or carabineer in order to get out.

We got in the tent about 9:00 and he finally fell asleep around 10:00. Here we are about 9:30 as he was exploring every square inch of our tent:

Here is how we ended up:

Note that he is over 3 feet tall, so he was taking up half of my sleep pad which made it a bit tough on me to lay straight.  But he is well worth it. Here is a video of him when he woke up:

I think this picture sums up our sleeping experience nicely:

Saturday morning we decided to get a hike in.  Here we are:

Two very cute hikers:

And one last picture:

I texted S about 11:00 on Friday night about  how blessed I was to be laying with my son outside under the stars.  The night turned out incredibly well considering how far south it could have gone.

Here is to hoping it is one of many.