Camping With The Boy Scouts

A couple weekends ago hubby, my son and I went camping at Pinnacles National Monument with the Boy Scouts.  This is the first time I have camped with the Boys Scouts and at Pinnacles.

We started packing at 1:00 on Friday and got everything together more or less by 5:00, stopped at the local Safeway for some sodas, cereal, milk, and muffins and headed toward Pinnacles. Traffic was good all the way, no problems at all. We stopped in Hollister – this is NOT a surfing town no matter how they decorate the mall stores – to pick up some sandwiches for supper. The sunset was gorgeous but I didn't have my camera handy in the car to take a picture. We finally got to the campground at 8 pm, a three hour drive.

We weren't the only ones arriving at that late but his friends already had buddies for their tents so he shared his with one of his new friends from his patrol  He got the Big Agnes backpacking tent. We set up our own tent. It’s a good one for two; it has covered vestibules both front and back, and both sides have a door, so no one has to be crawled over in the morning. We got the old Eureka wall tent – very roomy with just us two (and the first time we ever got to use it for just us two.

It was warm when we arrived but the evening was chilly. One of the dads is helping the boys earn their Astronomy Badge hence the camping at Pinnacles.  He had his telescope set up so we got to see Jupiter, the Pleiades, and some other cool stars.  The Milky Way was very visible – we never see it from our house.

My son's tent was to the left of ours, his friends was next to him, one of the older boys was between them, another older boy was to the right of us, his other friend was next to us.  The boys to the right of us were talking all night and the people across from us arrived late so they were setting up and talking really loud until 2 in the morning.  I had trouble sleeping -- there was so many different animal and people sounds.  At 3 am the coyotes started in and at 6 am the coyotes they started in again.  They sounded like they were right next to our camp site.  It got really cold during the night.  My nose was cold so I slept with the sleeping bag over my face.

The boys made breakfast of pancakes and bacon.  But they ate the breakfast while they cooked it so there wasn't much left when it got to the adults.  After they cleaned up breakfast which took the better part of the morning they gathered the troop to go on a hike.  They were going to see some bat caves which were within walking distance of the campground.  Hubby and I elected not to go on the hike.  It was too hot to go on a long hike.  The boys were gone 5 hours because the hike took longer then they thought, so everyone was thirsty, tired and hungry since they missed lunch.  While they were resting hubby and I went on a 3 mile walk to the Pinnacles overlook so we could see the Pinnacles but we missed the lovely afternoon sun on them so they weren't as spectacular.  There is an observation area where you can see the California Condors that they are trying to establish in the park. We got to see the Condors flying and sitting in the trees on the ridge which happened to be behind our camp site. We saw another Boy Scout troop coming back from their hike which took them 6 hours.  As we were walking back we saw this huge tarantula along the path.  There was a guy stopped ahead of us looking at the spider.  He didn't know what it was.  We saw a couple of bunny rabbits and one of them posed for me before taking off into the bushes.  For dinner they had spaghetti Alfredo and hamburgers.  The tenderfoot den had their astronomy lesson and looked at the sky.  We saw Jupiter again and it was bigger and we could see three moons like up in an arc to the right of it.  The Milky Way was a lot brighter tonight. All of the stars were spectacular.  We saw some shooting stars both nights and the International Space Station came by. Everyone was really tired so we all went to bed early.  The coyotes woke us up at 3 am and 6 am again.

Sunday we left late mid morning and stopped in Hollister at Chili’s to have some lunch.  I had a yummy grilled herb salmon with rice and steamed broccoli, the boy had some good chicken tenders with mashed potatoes and hubby had a steak pita like sandwich with fries.  We arrived home late afternoon and it was hot and crowded when we arrived.  Everyone was going to the beach.