Our first camping trip/My first hunting trip

Last weekend Justin and I went on our first camping trip since we've been married! We had been wanting to for forever, but never found the time.  But we finally went!  It was also my first time going hunting for myself. We shared our tent with Justin’s cousin and his friend.  Justin was so sweet and made sure I was warm.  I usually freeze when I go camping and I didn’t this time! Justin gave me his huge sleeping bag and I had two blankets.  Plus, Justin boiled some water and put it in a water bottle in my sleeping bag.  He also told me to wear less layers because then the sleeping bag will be able to trap my body heat.  What a sweet man I married, he took such good care of me.  He also cooked me a hamburger and carried all the heavy stuff.

The ride into our campsite was a rough one.  I rode on the back of a dirt bike with Justin.  We had it loaded down with all of our stuff and we had to ride in at night, in the dark.  I was scared for my life.  But I trust Justin with my life; he did really good.  We were glad we bought a nice headlamp because that is how Justin saw the trail.  I had my heavy backpack on my back and it was hard to hang onto Justin. I also had to hold my legs up the whole time because there weren’t any pegs to rest my feet on.  That was tiring and something hit my shin a couple times (probably a rock).

The motorcycle all loaded up

I am glad I had my coveralls in my car. They kept me warm on our ride to camp.

Dan was a trooper! He carried so much of our stuff!

We finally got to the campsite and set up the tent, ate dinner, and got all settled in and went to sleep.  Poor Justin had a little sleeping bag that wasn’t really meant for cold weather.  Dan, Justin’s cousin, gave him a fleece sleeping bag ,which helped and Justin would put his head into my sleeping bag.  He also had his feet in my sleeping bag next to the warm water bottle. Daniel was a trooper and packed a bunch of our stuff in and out.  We wouldn’t have been able to do it without him.

Beautiful sunrise

We got up early and hiked up the mountain to try to find some deer.  We hiked all day.  We saw two little bucks and a doe, but they were pretty far away.  Justin and I hiked pretty far and then we ran into a big moose.  Justin was 15 yards away from it when he first saw it (coming up over a little ridge).  He backed away because the moose started coming towards him. It just stood on the top of the ridge, not even 100 yards away and just watched us.  It was curious.  I’ve never seen a moose in the wild so close, and so massive.  It was majestic. We didn’t see any other wildlife and I was wishing we had gone after those little bucks.  It was our only day to hunt, so it was them or nothing.  But it was fun and we were tired and ready to go home.

The majestic, mighty, moose

The ride out was killer.  We were both so sore and had to stop often to rest our muscles.  We crashed once, but it wasn’t that bad.  We just slid in the mud and had a pretty smooth landing. I spotted a bunch of deer crossing the path we had just walked down right as we were leaving.  We tried to go after them, but they were too fast and we couldn’t find them.  Ah well, better luck next time.  We were wishing we had horses; it would have been much easier, and we could have traveled farther.  It was so fun to just be in the wilderness together.  A great weekend!