First Father/Son campout

Linc and I recently went on our first annual father's and son's campout with the Mtn. Vista ward on April 23-24 at Sycamore Creek, about 30 minutes southwest of Payson, AZ. We started by going to "Donald's" for a good cheap burger to fill us up before our drive. Lincoln was pretty happy with his burger. . .and then got entirely sidetracked by his kid's meal toy.


Linc was so excited to be camping he totally forgot that part of camping is actually "sleeping". After roasting a couple of marshmallows, he told me he wanted to go to bed, which kind of surprised me. So, we got in our sleeping bags. . .and then Linc started jumping around the tent and opening and closing the windows to "see the fire". We did that for about 45 minutes and then he wanted to go back outside, so we did. We went out, roasted a few more marshmallows and finally, around 11pm, he finally told me he wanted to go back to bed. After about another 10 minutes or so of tent wrestling, he laid down and told me to leave the tent so he could fall asleep, which I did, and which he did.

We didn't freeze, in fact we were quite warm although it had gotten pretty cold. Seems like we have now perfected our layered camping bed setup which includes foam pads, an air mattress, a blanket, a sleeping bag, plus another blanket, or two, depending on the level of coldness you may be exposed to. I'm not even supposed to be telling you this!!! It's a secret!

Lincoln really likes to hike. He's always asking us to take him hiking and when we do take him hiking and we're done hiking, he gets sad and says he wants to keep hiking. Yeah, he likes hiking.


As we were hiking, Lincoln kept picking up sticks to hold as he walked, a trait he picked up from his mom. We found a really nice branch that we ended up bringing home with us. We'll carve it and bring it on any campout we go on now. We call it the . . . wait for it . . . "FatherSon Stick". We're so stinking original I can't even stand it!


One of the kids caught a lizard and showed it to Linc. It jumped on his arm and hung out there for a bit before crawling up and onto Linc's back. He thought that was so funny and we've laughed several times since then about how the lizard crawled on his back.

Camping pretty well tuckered the little guy out. Thankfully, despite his exhaustion, he was able to keep a good grip on Spiderman on the drive home, preventing the sly webslinger from escaping. Mwah ha ha ha!


Looking forward to our next camping trip, which will certainly happen sooner rather than later.