Williams Family Blog

Well, this past Friday our ward had our annual Father and Sons campout. This year's was definitely an memorable one. I ended up taking Dallas, Braden, Tyson and Dakota (I tried to have a strict must be at least 3 age limit but there was no way I could leave him). We camped at a place near Lake Lavon and conveniently located right next to where they couple and decouple train cars.

We arrived first so we got first dibs on where to locate our tent. Like any good father, I chose to setup our tent in a patch of poison ivy so that I could help my boys develop a resistance to the stuff. (Truthfully, I didn't even bother to look and had no idea it was even there until much later in the evening). Luckily, we must have a pretty good resistance to it because no one came away with any rashes.

Any frequent camper knows the very important dilemma that you face every time you setup your tent - to put on the rain fly or to not put on the rain fly. I had checked the weather prior to leaving and there was no rain in the forecast until Saturday afternoon so I chose to leave the fly off in an attempt to keep the tent cooler. We got everything all setup in the tent and then it was dinner and play time. We had our very nutritious dinner of tube steaks (hot dogs) and cheesy Pringles and topped it all off Famous Amos cookies. The kids played with friends, there was a campfire program with some classic (aka corny) Boy Scout skits and then it was off to bed.

The kids fell asleep fairly quickly and I did the best I could considering the humidity and the noise from the trains. There was a decent breeze and I was happy with my decision to leave the rain fly off. Somewhere around 3:00 AM or so I started to feel drops of water hit my face. Braden had woken up and said "Dad, it's raining". I told him that it was just sprinkling and to pull up his sleeping bag and go back to sleep. I sat there mulling the various options in my mind and wondering if this was going to be a classic Texas thunderstorm or a classic Texas false alarm. It was dark so it was hard to really see what the sky was doing but I noticed some lightening in the distance and I decided that I wasn't going to risk it.

I knew I wouldn't be able to get the rain fly on my myself so I decided to just get dressed and pack everyone in the suburban. After I had carried all the kids to the car (I couldn't have them walking bare foot through the poison ivy) I grabbed all of the sleeping bags and then the sleeping pads and just stuffed them in wherever they would fit (thank goodness for suburbans). By the time I had everything but the tent I knew I had made the right decision because it started raining pretty hard. I left the tent where it was and we drove a few hundred yards away from the rest of tents and spent the rest of the night in the Suburban (the AC was fantastic but there really is no way to get comfortable in the drivers seat....I'm sure that's by design). In classic Texas thunderstorm style, it rained fast and furious for the next couple of hours. Around 6:45 AM we drove back up to our tent site to assess the damage and to decide if we wanted to stick around for breakfast.

The wind from the storm had collapsed our tent and it had several gallons of standing water in it. Luckily none of the poles had broken and the water was drained easily enough. We decided to stick around for breakfast and it was great. We had some breakfast burritos and the kids got to eat as much sugar cereal as they wanted because mom wasn't there (and dad really didn't care at that point). :-) The storm had chased away about half of the attendees so there was PLENTY of food and we had a great time eating and talking with the other survivors. Of course, when we got home Brooke gave me a hard time about not putting the fly on but in hindsight I'm not sure that the result would have been much different with how much the wind was blowing (except that we would have been in the tent when it came down). It was definitely a memorable experience and I am looking forward to doing again next year!!