Freezing to Death! Not the kind of words most people would like to use to describe a family camping trip, but they are the only words that accurately describe our trip to Smith Falls National Park.
It was a good plan, Colin, Katie, Colleen, and PJ flew into Omaha from New York on Wednesday night. Of course the flight was delayed and they did not arrive until about midnight. The next morning we packed into the cars with the camper in tow and headed the 7 hours to Smith Falls National Park. In an attempt to avoid Memorial Day crowds, we were to camp Thursday night, float down the river on Friday and come home on Saturday.
The drive up was fairly uneventful, especially considering we had a one(nearly two), four and six(nearly seven) year old as part our Oregon Trail reenactment. We safely ventured out into the middle of nowere without anyone getting Dysentery, though the closer we got to Smith Falls the darker the clouds got.
After making a slight “detour” down the wrong dirt road, we got to our completely empty camp site… the park staff wasn’t even there.
It started to get dark…it started to get cold. And to make matters worse, someone, I’m not naming names, had forgot to put the box full of sleeping bags and sweatshirts in the car.
We all made it through the night, Elena wasn’t bothered at all, I froze. In the morning, it was 38 degrees and we could see dark clouds rolling in. There was no way we were going to get in the river, so we packed up an went home. We did go over and take a few pictures in front of the falls before we left. Linda went down and put her feet in because she is a crazy person and was probably having a hot flash.
All in all, the trip was such an epic fail you couldn’t help but laugh. This will be one of those stories tell for the next 20 years.
We have a new family rule…No Camping in May!!
Frozenrobot 