This picture was on Day 1. Still smiling. After a very quick and uneventful drive to Lake Texoma, we found our campsite - close to the restrooms, close to the playground, close to the neighbors. Seriously, lots and lots of neighbors. It was a DFW Refugee camp.
Without a boat, and not intending to spend $150 for a two-hour rental, we decided to make do and have fun in other ways. And I am proud to say, we did it. Geocaching (4 sites!), hiking, fishing (for about 10 minutes), making friends at the playground, skipping rocks in the lake and evading giant spiders took up the majority of our time. Cooking - lots of Dutch Oven usage - took up the other time. What didn't take up too much time: sleeping. Four people in a four-person tent is a little squeeze, but cozy. Things we could control were great. Barking dogs, car alarms and slamming car doors in the middle of the night, not so much. After getting into the tent at 9:45, and being rudely awakened almost every hour by the other refugees, the call of nature came early. It was pitch dark and (finally) quiet when the kids decided they'd had enough tent imprisonment. The day started around 5am. Interestingly enough, days seem to last forever when you start that early. Revenge is sweet, because our kids have never been described as "quiet." Take that, Dog.
Somewhere around mid-day, the idea was broached (I'll never tell by whom) that we shouldn't spend another night in the tent. After all, a selling point of this location is its close proximity to home. After toying with the idea all day, and the looming probability of more tent-dwelling, this time starting at 7:45 instead of 9:45 (the kids were wrecked after a full day), we told them that at night-fall, we'd depart. It's very telling how readily they accepted that proposal. Apparently the night really had been that bad. By the time we'd packed up the entire campsite it was full dark - around 8:30pm - and the kids were both whining, almost sobbing - "hurry up! I'm ready to get in the car and go to sleep!"
The neighbors may have thought we were crazy. We think we were pretty smart. After all, there's no place like home - and a bed that doesn't deflate around 4am.
