Gearing up for Algonquin

Well, I survived one camping trip and am gearing up for my next. The first one was easy though, park the car and carry our gear down a tiny lane to the group site - piece of cake. It was really fun to camp with other families, there were about 6 families altogether, including 9 kids ages 9 to 9 months. But I got a little nervouse watching them deal with their children as they all looked at me and said "that's you next year". They're just jealous because I got to relax while they put reluctant kiddies to bed. Needless to say I took copious mental notes on camping with babies, especially as one couple have a little girl who is the age that our little jelly bean will be next summer. Key camping ingredient - giant tarp to lay on the ground. Other key tip? Do not encourage crawling unless we want our child to eat large amounts of dirt.

The few trails that Kurt and I hiked made me a little nervous about our upcoming interior trip to algonquin though. I discovered that even though I am not very big yet, there are limitations in what my body will allow me to do.

There are also many luxuries of car camping we won't have as we are paddling for 5 days which will include about 12 portages. So we won't have my wonderful air mattress, lawn chairs, an outhouse with walls and a ceiling, or a cooler. However, I am still really looking forward to getting out on a real camping trip. Hopefully we will get to see moose, I've been to algonquin twice before and both times was successful in my moose watch. Hopefully we will not see any bears. Anyways, have spent the past week getting geared up and now I am ready to hit the trails. But first another wedding to attend (glad I don't have to squeeze into a bridesmaid dress for this one, but it was totally worth it Erin to be a part of your beautiful wedding!) - that's what summer is for, right?