Spencer goes camping!

A few months ago Spencer started asking about going camping. We would play camp in the house, with blankets and a flashlight. He would pretend to roast marshmallows by holding animal cookies in front of his flashlight. So, I bought a new tent and we contemplated the best way to camp (start out in the backyard? Just pack the car and hope for the best?). We finally decided to skip the trial run in the backyard and actually go to a campground. Unfortunately, we made the decision about a week before Labor Day, and it never occurred to me that we would have problems finding a place to camp. We decided to just drive north and hope for the best. We had 4 campgrounds in north GA mapped out, and we were just going to hit each one and hope that we found a place we could stay. Sort of a stressful situation with a 3-year old on his first camping adventure. At the last minute we decided to call Stone Mountain Park, and sure enough they had some tent sites available! None of them were choice sites of course, but given the situation we decided it was the best option. So, we made a reservation and drove the 10 minutes to Stone Mountain Park for our camping adventure. Of course the entire time were were making jokes like 'well, if we forgot something we can just run home' or 'I can run home and shower in the morning'.
We did some fishing, which Spencer was excited about for maybe 20 minutes before moving on to other things (namely sand, mud, rocks and dirt). I caught the first fish, really by accident, and immediately freaked out and yelled for Fred to come release it. The folks fishing down the beach from us thought that was hysterical. Spencer was excited to see the little fish (then quickly moved on to sand, mud, rocks and dirt again). He was a little confused about why we were throwing it back, but didn't have a fit about it.We roasted marshmallows, which of course Spencer decided he didn't like without even trying one. Fred tried to cook bacon on a fork...that didn't work out so well.
One night we decided to try to see the Stone Mtn laser show (a true redneck adventure). There was a handy little shuttle that took us from the campground to the attractions at the mountain. We got there, found a great spot on the lawn, and waited...and waited...and waited... At first Spencer had fun running around and found some other kids to play with. But around 9 he got tired and had just had enough. So he decided to leave. We chased after him and brought him back a few times, but then realized it just wasn't going to work (and the laser show still had not started). So we went to get the shuttle back to the campground, which apparently doesn't actually run during the show...just before and after. Luckily the woman in charge of the shuttles took pity on us so we got our own private shuttle ride back to the campground.

Spencer slept well in the tent, in his new little sleeping bag. The only downside really was that we were camped amongst a bunch of RVs, all of which were pulled by giant heavy duty Ford pick up trucks that sounded like bulldozers. This was very annoying when we were trying to fall asleep at night, or stay asleep in the morning and someone decided they needed to drive the 100 yards to the campground general store. I've also never seen so many golf carts at a campground; it reminded me a little bit of the movie Wall-E.

In all it was a very good camping experience. I think we'll definitely go again, maybe this year but definitely next year. And lesson learned...next time I'll make reservations (in a more tent friendly area). Maybe we can even find some friends to go with us (anyone interested???).