Fathers and Sons campout

Friday night Sterling and I went on the Fathers and Sons campout (this is Aaron by the way...). Now I know for all of you PC people out there that it isn't really called Fathers and Sons anymore, but to me "priesthood encampment" sounds more like the rounding up of Mormons during a time of war like the Japanese internment camps or Nazi concentration camps. Therefore, I stick with the traditional nomenclature with apologies for the fatherless and sonless out there.

Tallie has had Sterling amped up for this campout for weeks. For those of you that don't know me well, despite my Oregon heritage, I do not particularly enjoy the great outdoors. There is something about being sweaty, unkempt and covered in a layer of dust while clenching my bowels to avoid defecating on a log that I find unappealing. But that's just me.

So this was Sterling's first foray into the wilderness, at least overnight. Tallie bought him some marshmallows weeks in advance, and he has been toting them around with him everywhere in expectation of our grand adventure. They put the tent up in the backyard in preparation. Sterling even packed his own backpack full of flashlights, fruit snacks, a football, his favorite book "A Fish out of Water", etc.

We hit the road about 4pm heading up near Pine, AZ. It's over 5,000 ft high, so it is considerably cooler than Mesa. The forecast called for a low of 40F. We got there at 6pm after a quick stop at Del Taco. you would not believe how long it takes to get Sterling to eat two tacos when he is geeked up for something. 35 minutes of me jabbing him with a fried tortilla. Unbelievable...

Once we found our group, we set up our tent and went looking for Caleb, Sterling's friend from nursery. His dad actually came by and helped us put up our tent. Chad didn't know where his 3 year old son was. This was to be a theme for most of the brethern all weekend. The good thing was that Caleb was under the supervision of Rocky. The bad part was that Rocky was 2 years old and unsupervised. Sterling and I played frisbee for a while, and we gathered a few orphaned children under 6 to play with us.

That night we made smores by the fire. Sterling LOVED cooking marshmallows. He didn't really care for eating them, nor did anyone else dare eat Sterling's concoctions since he frequently dipped the marshmallows in the ashes and the dirt. Eventually Sterling cut out the middle man and simply threw the marshmallows into the fire. Then came the pine cones, the branches, etc. He really thought it was cool that the chocolate wrappers would nearly disappear. His favorite thing to throw on the fire though was the dry grass that was everywhere because, "It makes the fire go BIG!!!".

This is where the campout theme continued. We were at a secondary fire pit not 25 feet from the main pit, and I was the only adult around. Several ~8 year olds thought it would be cool to set fire to the brush around us by transferring the fire out of our pit. I had to stop this several times. They finally gathered together some small rocks and built a small pit near ours. They proceeded to build a nice little fire there, which I tolerated but watched closely. They frequently tried to overextend the bounds of their pit, and frankly was not excited about having to drop the hammer on other people's kids.

Finally came the moment Sterling had been waiting for. At 9:30pm, we went to the tent to attempt to sleep. Being excited to go to sleep is really counterproductive for a three year old. He normally goes down before 8pm, so I thought I might have worn him out. No such luck. Despite our location on the periphery of the came site, there was a lot of noise. Music was playing, motor vehicles were driving, delinquents were cavorting, men were loudly conversing, etc. There was a car lined up in front of our tent, and the occupants kept getting in and out. The problem here was that their headlights would flash twice every time they locked or unlocked their car, lighting up our tent like a christmas tree. Of course Sterling had to ask, "What was that?" Exactly a billion times. I think we drifted off some time after 10:30pm.

We were up a little after 7am, and all was well. Sterling normally gets 12 hours of sleep, but the he was okay for the short term. They had a good breakfast for us consisting of pancakes, eggs, bacon, milk, and OJ. Afterwards, Sterling and I got out our plastic baseball and bat and his Oregon Duck football. I pitched and he hit, and it wasn't long before we had a large group of small children, sans fathers. If I was the witch in Hanzel and Gretel, I would have had a year's supply! We eventually switched to football for a while. Sterling got tired of that, so we left the kids with our equipment, still without any supervision. We headed down to a small stream with no more than a foot of water. Sterling loved throwing rocks. Somehow we had a different group of boys join us, eleven kids total at one point, none over eight. They kept bringing me the biggest rocks so that I could make a huge splash. After a while, I decided I did not want to be liable for any injuries or deaths from this group, so I washed my hands, literally and figuratively, and left the scene.

After getting completely devastated in a game of horseshoes (up 7-4, the guy threw two ringers in one turn!!!), Sterling and I headed home around 10:30am, with not damage to body or car. With that and not having to poop in the woods, I call the trip a grand success!!!

Sterling wants to go again next week. I look forward to playing defense for the next 51 weeks...