Campout Training is an Adventure!

Oh, boy, oh boy, oh boy! This afternoon was so much fun that words can’t even describe it! You might think I’m excited about just about everything and, well, I guess you’d be right! (I knew you were smart! After all, you’re following all of us fun-loving Stuffies on our adventures!)

Remember how I said we got to help out with the camp training? Well, this was one event where we didn’t really know much at all about what was happening. We thought we were experts. After all, camping seems pretty straightforward when you’re a bear! (Have fur? Will travel. Packing food? We can smell a banana in your car from a mile away, so we’ll be there shortly. No problem!)

But, it turns out, there’s a lot of pretty tricky equipment. For example, you need to be sure that you have plenty of water to drink. That’s important in these arid mountains, but especially when you’re planning to stay overnight. If you have no water, it’s hard to make pancakes for breakfast! Good thing these staff have super-dooper-good filters to take care of those pesky microscopic critters that don’t belong in your gut. (Specifically, your human guts. We stuffed bears are lucky to be just fine… Sorry!)

If this were a video, you’d have a better view of the action. S’mores was having a great time doing some log rolling on the tent. Or maybe it was a tarp. (We got a little distracted at the training and never found out what was in this magical bag. But it was nice & squishy and fun to play on, that’s for sure!

As you can see, Yeti was VERY interested in this backpack Jenni was packing. She asked a lot of questions about how much weight it could carry. And if it was ripstop. And waterproof. And if we thought valuable jewels would need to be cushioned inside of it. And about how many dollars would fit inside…. Wait, a minute. I just caught up. We might need to talk with her about Honesty and why breaking into museums and/or banks to get a zillions of dollars is a bad idea.

All we’ll say about this is that we LOVE cooking. So fun to set up these stoves and so fun to race and see how fast the water boils. (Just so you know, it’s extremely fast!) We were definitely disappointed that the staff were just doing a practice round this time. That means there were no snacks to eat. None hot, none cold, just none at all. We would have been happy to be Responsible for that. We let them know we’ll be happy to take care of it next time.

We were absolutely exhausted by the end of all the excitement. We started to play a game of hide & seek, but it was pretty hot. (Just a tip… When you have fur and are wearing a t-shirt and you’re cozy in a sleeping bag- don’t fall asleep when the temp is in the 80’s. You’ll be sorry when you wake up.) We solved the problem by heading off down the hill to the lake. It was nice and cool there with the breeze. We might or might not have taken a dip. (Don’t worry- we had lookouts and were very careful.