Adventures of Riley

I love being outside. I love eating outside and napping outside (in the sun by a pool) and reading outside. I loved it in middle school when teachers took class outside. One thing I'd never done, though, was spend the night outside in a tent. In the woods.


So last Sunday, we went camping! J grew up camping and had all the gear and knowledge, so all we had to do was pick a day and buy some food and go.


We chose a campsite in W.B. Umstead State Park. We had our pick because about a week in advance, no one else had booked a site! (There are 28, I think, and were probably about 6 other groups camping. We ended up switching sites because we saw a vacant one we liked better.)


Shopping for a trip (even just a one-nighter) is one of my favorite things. I love having all the things you "need" for a special activity. Mostly what we had to buy, as I said, was food. For two people (and a puppy) for one night, we probably went a little overboard, but it was so much fun picking out what we wanted. I wish I'd taken a photo, but we had a cooler of dry goods and a cooler for things to be refrigerated.


Anyways, we got to our site and set up shop. I took a photo of the before but forgot the after!





As soon as that was done, we got to cooking because we didn't want to lose sunlight. We brought ground bison meat to grill burgers, asparagus, green beans and red potatoes. (We forgot butter, so we ended up adding cheese to the potatoes and mashing them so they wouldn't just be plain!). We also forgot mustard, actually, but the bison was so fresh and delicious and smoky we didn't have anything with it other than white onion, garlic (mixed in the patty) and the bun. Yup, that's how good the Whole Foods ground bison is. Go get yourself a half a pound. S'more were obviously consumed after dinner.

Riley was such a good camper. She loved it all and spent a lot of time sleeping in the dirt and leaves chewing on a stick. Tent sleeping? No problem. We were lucky our "neighbors" let us have some thick padding pieces to sleep on because the blowup mattress didn't fit in the tent (I didn't think it would!) and the ground would have been hard otherwise.





The next day was sunny and not too hot. We made breakfast (yogurt parfaits) and took down camp. It was kind of crazy to spend hours putting up a camp and then taking it apart less than 24 hours later, but we wanted to get everything cleaned up and packed before our hike.


The trail we did was 2.75 miles and the trailhead was at the bottom of the campgrounds, so it was a no-brainer to pick that trail. It was a good one with a stream at the beginning where Riley played around.

Adventure dog!

Things we saw on the trail: Too many frogs to count, a black snake, two snappy dachshunds, one adorable yellow lab, someone's leftover Easter egg hunt (about 10 of them still filled with candy and homemade "coupons") that we left there in case they were doing it later... 

That's it! I was exhausted at the end of the day, but it was really fun and a great way for me to be introduced to camping. We have plans for a longer trip in the mountains, so now I won't feel as overwhelmed for that. Mission: Accomplished.