Mummy Milli

This time we try out a tent in exceptional heat.

Knowing that we were going to give camping in a tent a go, we planned to set ourselves up for success as much as possible with a practice run in the living room. At this point it had been over two years since setting up the tent so we wanted to give ourselves a refresher on how to set up the tent as we know from experience that this can be one of the hardest times to keep calm when camping. Along with this we wanted to check it was still in working order and our main aim was to get Monkey excited about camping and going on a new adventure.

We picked another close campsite, Pink Gum Campsite, and being one of the newer sites in the state we were hopeful for good facilities. While the flushing toilets and wash up trough were really nice we found the camping pads to be too compacted to get pegs through, even though we had brought a hammer. We should have been tipped off, on arrival when there were half a dozen bent tent pegs scattered around the fire pit.

This is also the campsite that has impacted all future booking of campsites with small children. The campsite was flat but had steep drop offs on two of the three edges, all Monkey wanted to do was ride his tricycle, or run off of the steep edge. It was a constant worry for me and I didn’t want to spend my whole camping trip telling Monkey ‘stop!’ and “no!’ and taking away his tricycle as that just wouldn’t be fun for anyone. This is the reason we decided all future campsites would be big and flat and open. The more distance we can give Monkey the less stress for everyone involved. 

The heat was oppressive and even with the little fans, we found we couldn’t spend much time inside the tent – which was an option of mine to stop Monkey trying to ride his bike off the drop off, and to also get us out of the sun.

We decided instead to head to the beach. It was a bit of a disappointment to go camping only to aim to spend as much time away from the campsite as possible but it was the only way we were going to get through the camping trip and enjoy it. This in itself was a good lesson in accepting change and knowing what we like and how to make the trip enjoyable for ourselves rather than suffering through by doggedly sticking with a plan we had.

The beach at Port Noarlunga was a good reprieve and also validated my extra packing of clothes for Monkey as I figure toddlers are just going to get dirty and in this case very wet. We played under the jetty as Monkey unfortunately has my fair skin, and while I had packed the extra clothes I was not prepared for a beach day and bathers.

Thankfully the day was cooling down when we arrived back and heated up dinner, again, trying to keep the trip simple we had a pre-made freezer meal to heat and eat.

The night, however, was hard for me in particular. Monkey was still in a sleep sack but the temperature variation from when we went to sleep to the coldest part of the night was a very large swing. We put Monkey in the middle of us to sleep, unfortunately with Monkey also being very used to his own bed he would wriggle side ways and kick us throughout the night. It was not a comfortable night for anyone involved. The prospect of two and a half weeks, on our road trip to Victoria, of sleepless nights like that is not going to work.

Morning finally came, along with a campfire to warm us up as we ate our overnight oats. Eating as soon as waking definitely improved Monkeys spirit, something we learned the hard way from our First Camping Trip.

Pack up was fairly easy, particularly because we travel with a dustpan and broom in the car. This was a dusty site and the broom meant the tent was fairly clean so we didn’t have to bother cleaning it when we got home, especially with our next trip being only a few weeks away.

Grabbing lunch on the way home was a nice way to round out a much more stressful weekend than we had planned for it to be. It made us realise that the temperature plays a very large role in the pleasure of camping, to pick our sites much more diligently and that maybe a tent isn’t the way for us. However, we will give the tent one more try as we know that these things just take practice.