Late Autumn Visit to Lorien

Location: Outskirts of Lorien

Date: November 5th-7th, 2018

Activity: Camping!

Ended up being a pretty uneventful camping trip due to the cold, but we had some fun anyway! Had to drive through some pretty foggy stretches to get out here! Especially since this is deer country, you really don’t want to be going too fast at night. There was also quite the obstacle course to get through the final 5 miles due to all of the downed trees. Consequently, we didn’t arrive until around 10:45pm, which is quite a bit later than our usual. The kids’ grandpa had arrived around 1pm, and had steak waiting for them. They love camping with Grandpa!

Getting camp set up didn’t take too long since I downsized a bit (no cot, no side table, etc), so we were in bed before midnight. Both kids wore their fleecy sweaters for warmth, which was plenty for Sieh. Leeloo is a lot more sensitive to the cold, so she slept in the sleeping bag with me (under a ton of extra blankets, it was chilly!)

Woke up at precisely 9am to two very hungry kids. Got their breakfast for them, then got the water heating for my tea, breakfast, and face washing. Ate breakfast, got cleaned up, and decided it was time to get the fire going.

Had just gotten the kids all kitted up and out for a walk when it started raining pretty steadily, so we had to postpone while we got a tarp over the fire. I always carry a very small, stinky, black-stained tarp for precisely this reason. I’d never put my nice tarp over a campfire, but a cheap blue one certainly does the trick! Should have done it earlier, but we were hopeful that the weather would remain fine.

Had a bit more tea while waiting for the fire to recover, then proceeded with the interrupted exploring. Sieh was feeling his tent time so I just took Leeloo instead of carrying him in the backpack and then switching them out. She mostly wanted to explore the road that runs by our site. It’s a source of endless fascination for her.

In spite of her cold, she had lots of fun running around!

We even got some jogging in!

She loves hanging out on the bridge, looking down at the raging waters below.

She rubbed against the bridge and got paint and green slime on her coat, officially breaking it in.

Sieh gets more and more confident on every adventure! He’s getting a very good sense of where the leash is, so now he feels more comfortable making leaps and bounding about.

He has to stop frequently to joyfully rub against things,

and tree climbing is high on his list of ‘things to do in the woods’.

He explored all over and then was very cross when it was time to head back to camp because it was getting dark.

Wow, the temperature got down to freezing our second night out! I finally had both kids in the sleeping bag with me! Leeloo had already burrowed in when Sieh came over and laid on top of us, and I could feel him shivering. I grabbed him and shoved him inside and he didn’t even shift around to get comfortable, he just feel right asleep all warm and happy. He finally learned the joy of camping snuggles!

Day two we didn’t do much, just took a short wander around the campsite, packed up, and shipped out. It was too cold to stay without a fire, and we burned all the wood the day before.