First Outing

We bought a new travel trailer and decided to go camping before the weather turned cold. Along with my parents, the adoring Papa Jerry and Gamma Jane, we headed to Nebraska National Forest (4 1/2 hours away) for a long weekend on October 15th. We planned meals, and thought out what we would bring. We brought frozen waffles by Van’s (which are great by the way) oatmeal, trusty cereal, and lots of eggs for breakfast. We packed lots of vegetables and fruit, and meats for each meal. We brought one loaf of bread and premixed flour with fix’ns for another loaf. We packed drinks, and rice milk, coffee, and Mimiccreme for mommy’s coffee. You have to roast marshmallows and I couldn’t find any non-high fructose corn syrup ones, so we just used the old back up. We brought some chocolate (non-milk kind) and S’moreables graham cracker substitute to make smores. Again we felt very prepared when we left home with all of our food stocked. Or so we thought.

We left the house late on Thursday night, after packing clothing and odd tidbits at the last minute. Ran a few errands and it was 8:00 before we knew it. We wanted to get on the road and still needed to eat something. We went to Burger King with my parents. Everyone wanted to get their old favorites, but nothing was acceptable on our new diet… Chicken sandwich, whopper, cheeseburger, french fries… A comment from mom ‘that’s not on our diet” and a quick look of disgust from dad… they all got their old favorites. One time, could it really hurt?

On the four and a half hour drive out there they watched a movie and fell asleep. It was not too bad for eating sake. The campsite set up nicely especially for our first time and doing it in the dark. The next few days were well… food wise… we had cross contamination from my parents regular bread, but otherwise pretty good. The behavior and the accidents were another story all together.

I cut my finger on Friday morning opening a bag of cereal. Note – put scissors in camper! A few hours later our eight year old daughter scratched her cornea. We ended up at the ER in a Broken Bow, over an hour away. Friday ended alright with a card game and snack food session for the parents. Poor kids we didn’t let them have BBQ chips or Nut Rolls. It didn’t seem too bad for them.

On Saturday we baked meatloaf and bread in the oven. Note – must bake bread in full oven!

After lunch my husband and I went for a ride on the 4-wheelers. We got lost! Four hours later, just after sun set, we made it to the campsite with gas tanks that should have run out of gas long before we made it back. That night our daughter came down with a fever and her eye was bothering her terribly.

But the worst was the ride home. We are used to getting snacks and drinks at the gas station. We had to stop twice and all the kids, including Dad, were winning that they wanted something to eat. We ended up spending $2 on a little bottle of apple juice for each child as this was the only item with no additives. Snacks? Well we ended up getting some peanuts for them, but they wanted some of Mom and Dad’s chocolate covered peanuts. Not a good situation. They were acting up something awful all the way home.

This post is not about the diet as much as it is about frustrations. It was our first adventure away from home. Sticking to the specialty foods was difficult but I consider us still in the learning phase of this diet. For me the most difficult thing was the calamity of errors or accidents or whatever you want to call them. In general things that went wrong. When you get to your wits end with all those little things you don’t have the energy to fight for anything else.  All in all not horrible for our first weekend away from home.