First Camp of 2024 with my daughter

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This past week I had the opportunity to slip away for an overnight trip into the mountains with Marley and my two-year-old daughter Elizabeth. My plan was to head into a remote area of the mountains in my newly rebuilt Jeep and to setup a primitive camp. Packing everything I would need to care for and entertain a two-year-old was a bit stressful, but I just tried to keep things simple.

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I pulled into a flat area that had just enough room for a tent with some amazing views of the surrounding snow-covered mountain ranges. Elizabeth was excited to get out and explore, she absolutely loves looking for rocks.

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I did bring my EVOL standard .22 that I carried with us in hopes to find some Jackrabbits along our hike down the river.

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We had a nice little hike along the river, saw zero animal activity that's to be expected with such low temperatures. It has been pretty cold, high of 43 degrees during the day and 24 during the night with a little wind.

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After a short little hike we made it back to the Jeep where I unloaded our gear and started setting up camp, Elizabeth was really excited about the tent.

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After setting up the tent and Elizabeth being so patient all day, I rewarded her with a cookie out of the snack bag.

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While she enjoyed her cookie, I spent some time digging a firepit and cutting some dead branches off the nearby trees for some firewood. As it got into the evening the temperature was dropping and a fire would serve to warm us up into the night.

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For dinner I kept things simple with some grilled cheese sandwiches made with sourdough bread and pepper jack cheese, perfect for a cold night.

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Don't worry, we did share with Marley as she worked as hard as she could searching for Jackrabbits earlier in the day. By this time, it was getting later and much, much colder so we decided to hunker down in the tent.

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I did set out a camera to run time lapse and to capture anything coming into camp that night. It did start raining pretty heavily around 2:00am so I had anticipated a very cold morning. We did stay very warm with all the gear I brought and ended up having a very nice, relaxing sleep through the entire night. That following morning it was freezing, and I knew it was probably best to fire the Jeep, crank the heater and get the girls inside and warm.

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We had a fantastic time and I was so happy that Elizabeth had fun and was able to handle these primitive type camping excursions, she will be doing many more into this year. We did have a pretty long drive home as the mountains were buried in snow and ice, thankfully the Jeep was working very well since all the work I have done to it. Enclosed is the video documentation of our trip that includes some bonus stuff where I show some of what's involved in unpacking all the gear. These trips are very continual as part of the work I do so my gear does take quite a beating. Hope you enjoyed checking this out and hope to share more very soon.

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Dana - color me impressed. Toddlers are a lot of work - not sure I would've been up for bringing my kids out for a night by myself at that age. You may already be aware, but I can tell from the pictures that was a very special cookie.
I was a bit nervous about it but she's been RV camping with us since she was two weeks old. Lol Honestly the tablet she got for Christmas really helped occupy her for the car ride and while in tent. She did great and my wife was happy to have some relaxing time at home with our other dog. Thanks for checking it out, I'm sure I will share more soon. At the moment we're out for some serious pest control with the Evol. 😊
 

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