Our first camping trip with scouts was exactly six years ago this weekend — I didn’t know that until I checked the way-back machine at the bottom of the page. I was with the Boy during that trip, and I made sure he kept warm. And there was no rain, so keeping dry was a simple issue.

This weekend he was alone, and I had no idea how it would go. We went about our weekend, including a lovely walk this morning, as if everything had gone perfectly.

Still, the questions from Friday’s post lingered in our heads:

Did we prepare him well enough? Is he going to keep warm and dry this evening? Will he accidentally put his pack up against the wall of the tent and get his stuff wet? There’s no way to know until Sunday.

“Camping“

And so today, we found out.

“Did we prepare him well enough?” No, not really. We didn’t send him with a tarp to put under his tent, so he had to bunk with two other boys, crammed into their tent.

“Is he going to keep warm and dry this evening?” Most definitely not: the tent leaked.

“Will he accidentally put his pack up against the wall of the tent and get his stuff wet?” No, he didn’t do that, but the tent leaked badly enough that almost all his clothes got wet, so he was stuck with one tee-shirt and a pair of shorts for the rest of the trip.

But did he have fun? Most definitely.

“Did you want to give up?” we asked him.

“Yes, that first morning.” But after he and the boys he bunked with hiked back to the cars with one of the adults to get a spare tent and take back all their wet stuff — which was almost everything — things were fine.

Fine, but tiring — which you can see from the picture of his return:

Once we got home, and he took a shower and had some warm, tasty home cooking, he settled down with a cup of hot tea to relax for a couple of hours.