Brrr... We Camp!

Yeah, we do! We're campers. We camp. We know what we're doing!
So we arrived at our campsite on Saturday afternoon. It was cold and there was a chilly breeze coming in off the lake, but we figured we had enough blankets with us we could survive the best cold that Texas could throw at us.

We unpacked and snuggled in reading and talking and when the sun finally started going down we grabbed the lantern and tried to get that set up and working. Guess what? The battery operated lantern that P insisted on buying didn't work. We replaced batteries, fiddled with this and that and the next thing to no avail. Thankfully I had insisted on buying a cute little oil burning red one. We just got that working when it was lights out. Of course neither of us was comfortable having the oil lamp in the tent with us... it being flammable and all so we really didn't get to do much at night. We were FREEZING. We decided to forego comfort and instead load the blankets on top rather than on the bottom. Luckily I brough the iPod with us, loaded with some freebie TV show previews so we could at least watch those since we weren't bringing the lamp into the tent. (Also, for some dumb reason I had bought cinnamon scented oil. I detest cinnamon!!)

We tried to play a couple of hands of Uno and risked bringing the lamp inside, but the cloying smell of oil and cinnamon just was too much. Also, we couldn't tell what was a green card and what was blue so it was kind of pointless.

We tried to sleep but with all the shivering and teeth chattering it was slow to come. We both woke up several times in the night. Peter was worried that I would freeze to death so he kept checking on me. Every time I turned over I bumped the side of the tent and little icicles fell on his face. Let's just say, NOT the best nights sleep we ever had. But it was FUN!

Eventually at around 5am we both needed the loo and we had accepted that we weren't going back to sleep anytime soon. We got up, jumped in the car and pumped up the heat. I ran and got the kettle going for some tea and we sat in the car toasty and warm sipping on tea and hot chocolate to watch the sunrise. What a sunrise it was! Beautiful!!

With the sun out our tent started to defrost and our neighbor came by to see how we were doing. We were the only ones in tents this weekend. Everyone else had an RV and so heating and comfy beds etc. He told us that it had gone down to 19 degrees that night... 19 degrees F which is... quick Google check... about 6 or 7 degrees Celcius.... But remember, that doesn't include the gusts of cold wind blowing in off the lake. Even the bottles of water that we had left outside the tent were frozen up the next morning when I went to make tea... so yeah... COLD.

With the tent defrosted and the sun bursting through the open door we finally fell asleep for an hour. But then the wind picked up something crazy and, rather than waiting to see what kind of weather IT was blowing in, we decided to pack up and go on home.
We absolutely loved this campsite. It is just too beautiful and we will be prebooking a couple of weekends in the Spring and Summer for sure. But we definitely learned our lesson about camping in winter!

Anyway... there are loads of pictures in our Picasa album. Enjoy!
Oh... and NO COMMENTs on how grotty and dishevelled I look!