I don’t know about you, but the weeks seem to be flying by this summer. How did August get here so soon? And more importantly, why are the stores stocking Halloween items already?! You just know that in a week or so, the inundation of Christmas will begin.

It used to be that you wouldn’t see any Christmas stuff until the day after Thanksgiving, just in time for Black Friday, and to kick of what typically (for me) is the Christmas season. But the retailers want that almighty dollar total to be higher, so they start pushing Christmas way too early.

Of course if you don’t jump on the bandwagon and buy what you want or need for Christmas, chances are it’ll be long gone before Thanksgiving. It’s a vicious cycle, I tellya!

Speaking of vicious cycle… I feel bad for the Canadians who are dealing with the massive wildfires going on up there.

We’ve been inundated with lots of smoke and what’s been described as ‘particle matter’, causing some air quality issues all throughout our state.

To be fair to our friendly Canadian neighbors, though, we have our own wildfires burning in our state that are sending smoke into Canada, too. Kind of like a smoke exchange. It’s been brutally hot and dry for our area – not the ‘norm’, for sure – so the fire dangers are much higher than normal. I think the same goes for Canada.

The smoky haze was so bad this weekend while we were camping, there was a fine layer of soot all over everything throughout the weekend – I kept wiping all my kitchen stuff down, and a few hours later, had to do it again. Luckily we spent a lot of time in the river to keep the soot covering ourselves to a minimum.

When we were packing up to go home, we ended up with a fine layer of soot and dust all over, that clung to the sweat. Little Dude looked like he had a uni-brow and goatee – it was too funny (though he didn’t find it particularly funny when we gave him baby wipes to wipe his face off, and we kept having to stifle the laughter as he kept missing the dirty spots).

I wasn’t immune, though, after we got home and unloaded the car, I went upstairs to take a much needed shower and cool off. I noticed a decent dirt smudge on one cheek (no doubt when I attempted to brush off the sweat with the back of my hand), and when I brushed my hair before jumping in the shower, a cloud of dust and soot filled the air. It was actually pretty comical to see.

By the end of the weekend, all of us reminded me of Pig-Pen of Peanuts:

Moving on… Can you believe me, ms. shutter-happy, didn’t take any pictures this weekend? I know, right?

I mean, I did bring a camera with me – a waterproof one that I could have taken with me in the river, and of course my phone was with me, and while it had no signal during our stay, you don’t need a signal to take pictures. Except the one from your brain to take said pictures. I chose to live in the moment rather than being snap-happy.

But next camping trip all bets are off. I’ll be making up for the no picture taking by taking twice as many. Just you wait and see.

Oh wait – I did take one picture, as I was loading the car to get ready to go. The night before the hubby helped me put the 48-gallon tubs along with the 10′ canopy and the kids’ chairs on top of my car, then I had to use my 3-step step stool to ratchet tie everything securely the next morning:

I had no idea what I was doing, but it worked! Nothing shifted, and nothing fell off! *whew!* I did an even better job for the trip home – practice makes perfect and all that jazz. I’m sure it helped that I grew up with my dad being the king of tying things securely. My hubby always gave my dad a hard time about his intricate tying of stuff on the back of his truck, but my dad always replied that he’s never had anything fall off!

We’ve never had to load stuff on top of my vehicle, even though I got the roof racks for that purpose, because usually we divvy up the gear between both our vehicles (including the dogs and kids for better comfort level for them), but since the hubby had an important meeting on Friday, I was tasked to haul the camping gear plus 2 kids and 3 dogs to the campsite solo.

Next camping trip will be ‘normal’, so I’m sure the kids and dogs will be happy about that. Although Little Dude seemed quite happy being crammed in two-thirds of the back seat with the 3 dogs. That’s my story and I’m stickin’ with it!

That’s a wrap for this week – you know the drill, link up and join in the fun, everyone is welcome, random or not. And that means even if you don’t have a specific Random Tuesday Thoughts Rebel post posted, you can still link up, I’m not picky. You don’t even have to add the badge, just link up so I can come harass you on your blog. I promise to play nice.

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6 Comments

  1. That sounds like you made less than ideal circumstances into one of the best camping trips ever.

  2. Sometimes I skip taking photos and just enjoy being somewhere. I usually wish I had taken some but I also like that I have just the pure memory.

  3. OOH, sounds like you had an interesting camping trip. I learned a lot about Pig-Pen at the Schultz Museum on Saturday. According to the museum, Pig-Pen has the most self-confidence of any of the Peanuts gang.

    Thanks for hosting and have a wonderful week.

  4. I’ve been hearing about those fires. That’s crazy. I sometimes don’t always get the news unless I watch the BBC, but still scary.

    I would like to go camping sometime I think. It would be an experience. Glad you are home again to your own shower.

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