Steve and Judy's Travels!

…the rest of the story.

The great tenting experiment.

Camping in Colorado was just right, as expected.  The day was warm, but the night was cool.  The cotton flannel sleeping bag on an air mattress was comfortable.  The sleeping bag is light, rated for 40 degrees, so I didn’t have overkill for warmth.  Pure comfort.

The Texas experiment was a little different.  I knew it was pretty hot for camping in a tent, but heck, I’ve slept in hot climates before and survived.  It would be a little warm when I went to bed, but how bad could it be?  Really?

It was 108 degrees that afternoon when I set up the tent.  I didn’t want the air mattress and sleeping bag to get too hot too soon, so I didn’t put them in the tent right then, I left them in the car.  With all the windows open, there was plenty of airflow in the tent, but the ambient temperature was too hot to go inside, or even stand around outside in the shade, so I got back in the air-conditioned car and killed a few hours driving around, enjoying the scenic canyon, getting out here and there to admire the view or watch some birds, but mostly I stayed air conditioned.  It didn’t drop below 100 degrees until after dark.  I didn’t really need to go to sleep until 10:00, so I stayed in the car until then.  It was 95 degrees.  Still pretty hot, but I didn’t have to cover up, I could just lie there in the open air, so I blew up the air mattress and spread out the sleeping bag.  It didn’t take long to realize that something special was going on.  The air mattress felt like it was radiating heat at about 4,000 degrees.  I thought I was going to have enough separation from it and the hot ground below with that nice cotton flannel sleeping bag, but not so.  Any part of me that was lying on it was burning up.  Any part of me that wasn’t, was sweating off the excess heat.  I pretended to be a rotisserie all night so every part of me got an equal share of abuse, and found if you’re really tired it’s possible to fall asleep when you’re way too hot, but not for very long.  I fell asleep and woke up about a thousand times!

So the results of my research reveal that yes, on hot days and warm nights, there is weather that is too hot for tent camping, not from the air temperature inside the tent, but from sleeping on a hot air mattress.  But wait!  There is such a thing as a camping cot.  That would get a person up off the heat of the ground with some ventilation underneath.  With a little different gear, this exercise might have to be repeated…

I’ll report back.

Pretty yellow color.

I think it’s a goldenrod crab spider.

Judy had a good time in Colorado with Christie and Becky.

They had a pedicure day.

Kyle and Cameron were there too.  The three boys joined a 5K run.  Kyle came in 1^st.  Cameron 3^rd.  And Conner 6^th (2^nd in his age group). 

Since Conner didn’t finish in the top three, he got some good-natured ribbing of course; teasing about finishing behind that woman pushing a stroller.  If she hadn’t had twins in it, he maintains, he could have come in 4^th!

Time for Judy to leave.  They all got up and saw her off bright and early.   (Then the boys went back to bed.)

And off she goes from Colorado to San Diego.

It was late.  Jesse claimed her spot on the bed.  I didn’t want her to sleep on the bed.  She wiggles too much at night.  I told her to get down.  She resisted.  I insisted.  She complied, reluctantly, but when I closed the door, she was still standing right on the other side of it looking up at me.  I got to sleep by myself.

Next morning though, when I walked through the house, I discovered dog poop on the floor in the front room.  Dog poop on the floor doesn’t happen at our house.  They have a dog door and a yard.  I got a bag and picked it up.  It wasn’t soft and fresh like “I just woke up and tried to make it to the door, but I just couldn’t get there in time.”  No.  It was dried up dog poop that had been there all night.  I surmise that as soon as I kicked her out of the bedroom she walked into the front room and punished me.

So, yes.  Lesson learned.  “Don’t disappoint Jesse!”

We had this dwarf firebush.  It’s a hummingbird attractor.  We thought “Hey. Let’s hang the hummingbird feeder right over the hummingbird attractor and make it easy for them.”  So we stuck a big shepherd’s hook in the ground and hung a feeder from it.

Well, we can’t convince the dwarf firebush that it’s a dwarf.  We gave up trimming it down to keep it below the hummingbird feeder.  Now we just keep it trimmed back around the feeder so the birds can still find it.