{our fourth of july weekend}

Look at this! I'm posting within a week of last time, folks! I hope to post more often when the summer trips end, but I can't make any promises. I will tell you this, I'm working on a project for my nephew, so I may post about that in the near future...

Anyway, you're all here to read about our camping trip, not my semi-empty promises, right? 

We left Thursday night as usual and watched clouds dump rain on the mountains as we approached Alamogordo. We finally made it a little before dark to our favorite {and now wet} campsite. We basically got set up and then went to bed. 

The next morning, we slept in, trying to catch up on the sleep we lose each summer. When we finally did get up, we scavenged for dry-ish wood, and Mechanic Man managed to get a pretty good fire going, but not enough to make breakfast. So we got to try our camper kitchen out! It works really well. As we were doing all this, I thought I heard an elk bugle. Sure enough, not too much later, we heard it again, though it sounded kind of squeaky{we're guessing it was a young bull trying his stuff out} . Down in the valley below us were about 10-15 elk, grazing contentedly. 

As I was photographing these elk, I suddenly heard a snort from the hill above me, and then the whole herd headed up the mountain. I guess the leader of the herd didn't like me doing that. 

We went riding after breakfast, taking in some new scenery on trails we hadn't ridden before. By the time we finished and headed back to camp, clouds were building up, and we ended up arriving back at the camper right before a downpour that turned into a rainstorm that lasted well into the night. So we made supper and ate in the camper while it rained, and then played Mexican train dominoes until bedtime. 

Can I just add here, that as much as I love sitting around a campfire in the outdoors at night, there's also something fun about being snug and warm and dry inside a camper playing games with your family while a thunderstorm rages outside? I don't know what it is about it, but I have some pretty fond memories of rainy nights in a camper or tent. I remember one time we played Uno all night in a tent with a flashlight because it was rainy. Anyway...

We woke up to elk in our campsite. That was pretty neat! They didn't stick around too long, though, since Hancock was growling at them from inside the truck.

That morning we didn't even attempt a fire because everything was sopping wet. We laid some wood in the sun to dry out, hoping that we'd be able to at least have a fire to make lunch on. Then we went riding on some new trails again. We were attempting to find a lake, but we never made it. We were running out of gas, and we saw the beginnings of another storm that looked worse than the last one, so we decided under a pine tree and over an orange that we should probably head back. 

That trip back is a pretty long story, because it was a long, cold, wet, and kind of anxious drive. But we made it back safely, and gave up our hopes of fires, and ate lunch over the stove before packing up and heading home. 

I realized the other day that I never finished posting about the Little House on the Back of a Truck. After this weekend, we know it's tried and true, so maybe once I clean the mud out of it again, I'll take some pictures and finish up.