Swell

Mothers day weekend we headed to San Rafael Swell with the Gallegos crew for a weekend of dirt, sun and climbing. It was the best camping trip ever! Because Mothers Day was approaching all the kids were on their BEST behavior, the weather was prefect, the food made and cleaned up itself, we got all caught up on our sleep and did TONS of climbing. Check out Claud and Bri on the rocks.


Wait. That must have been someone else's Mothers Day weekend. Like maybe someone who's not a mother.

Ari was SUPER crabby the week before we left, I realize now it was because he was getting sick. About an hour before we arrived in the Swell Ari hit a wall. By the time we got to the dino dig he had lost his will to live, let alone see real life paleontologists digging up dinosaur bones. Ya, it was serious. He got a high fever, must have been about 103-104 and was really lethargic, just wanted to be held. He slipped in and out of this mental state depending on how often we could get him to take some medicine, which was not often...at one point we literally almost crammed it down this throat. Poor kid was miserable.

These photos of Ari pretty much sum up how he felt.

The first night camping was interesting.

Sometime between 2 and 4 AM Ari woke up delusional (to be blamed on the high fever). He sat up in bed crying and mumbling and desperately trying to tell us something. We finally found out that he needed to go to the bathroom. We found that out the hard way. Ari emptied his 5 gallon bladder in the tent. It was RUNNING down the tent, the sleeping pad and all clothes that happened to be downhill were soaked. I changed Ari's clothes, put him in my sleeping bag with Isaac, Joe ran to the van to grab towels, we got it mopped up, flipped over the pad, realized Ari's sleeping bag had thankfully been on top of him not under him, put his bed back together, stuck him back in there and eventually went back to sleep.

Isaac was having some issues of his own. It was called diarrhea. His teeth must have been making some headway because he had acid poo diarrhea. The kind that required a bum change and large amounts of diaper rash cream every 2-3 hours. He pooped through his PJ's only once that night...

Guess who else was not feeling well (mental state of parents does not count)? Apparently K-So. I sort of forgot that she doesn't do well eating other dogs dog food, buy the next morning I remembered. See, I thought that by leaving K-So in the van for the night I was doing her a favor. She would have a warm cozy place to sleep on the back seat. Right? Well, that might have worked fine excepting she apparently experienced some stomach issues and needed to get out of the van, which she couldn't do. We awoke to poop on the floor, the rug, my pants and in Joe's duffel bag. To her credit this is the first time she has peed/pooped in a vehicle and has only had an accident in the house once in the last 4 years. I felt bad for her. And for Joe who cleaned it up.

So, aside from me discovering a 2 month old mushy, stinky vegetable product (cucumber?) in the camping box (and dumping the moldy stinking juices out over my dishes), and bring 1 fork and 10 spoon's; the rest of the trip went ok for us.

We got in zero climbs and about 1.2 miles of hiking. We spent our days playing in the dirt, walking around, splashing in the river, eating, feeding and trying to keep each other awake. Here are some photos of happier times, when Ari had some Tylenol running through is veins.

Truth be told it was actually quite nice, better than sitting around at home? I'd do it again. Just not sure the Gallegos clan would want us to come if we showed up with gimp children again...;) Let's hope our July climbing excursion goes better.