Camping and Thomas: Third time's the charm, right?

If I had known on our first camping trip that A) it would become a tradition and B) it would get more challenging each year, I might not have done it.

I took Sawyer to Boone to visit Tweetsie and see Thomas the Tank Engine for the first time two years ago. I decided to camp one night and see how he did. We had a magical experience. Tweetsie was a hit. Camping went pretty well (other than not having very hot food). And of course, Sawyer was over the moon about seeing Thomas.

How could I not want to do it again? 

The next June, the weather was our enemy. We hit the most massive wall of fog I've ever seen, so bad that I debated even staying in town. We had a few hours of calm (and a better fire with hot food) before the rain came. It rained ALL NIGHT LONG. Pounding torrents of rain. Our saturated tent finally gave up about 4 a.m., and water drip, drip, dripped in between our mattresses. We packed up in the rain. Went to Tweetsie in the rain. Rode wet rides (which actually was kind of fun). And at the end of the day, we retreated to Grandmother's house for the evening. It was fun, but tent camping in the rain is no fun … especially as the sole adult with a child. 

After this year, we might skip camping completely for Thomas weekend, as it seems to be cursed. 

Sawyer and I headed to Hickory on Friday night after work. I had the car packed, so I picked him up from preschool and we hit the road. After dinner at our favorite barbecue restaurant, Grandmother mentioned that Sawyer felt hot. When we returned home, a quick temperature check confirmed her suspicions. He had a very low-grade fever, but he was acting pretty normal. I figured he might have the beginnings of a little cold.  

So I gave him ibuprofen, and he went to bed. The next morning, the fever was back. He had no other real symptoms though, and I wasn't going to urgent care for a mild fever. So we headed north for our camping trip about lunchtime. I should've known something was off when he was so agreeable about everything. 

We arrived at Julian Price Park about 1:30, picked a campsite (after about eight trips around the one-way loops to scope them all out … I'm very picky) and started setting up. I had bought a new, bigger tent, and this was my first time setting it up. All tent experts will tell you to set it up once at home to make sure you have all the parts and to make sure you CAN set it up. I didn't have time the week before to do this. But I'm also not dumb. I brought our old tent as a backup in case something went wrong. And I almost decided to pull it out. 

The new tent is not only bigger; it's taller -- part of the appeal. I was tired of stooping to do everything in the tent, and the new one has 6 feet of headroom! I had read dozens of reviews, and a few said it was challenging to set up with just one adult, but I figured I could manage, even if it took me awhile. I underestimated how much of a challenge it would be for 5'3" woman and a 3'6" child to set up a 6' tent! It took me forever, and I was ready to chuck it before I finally got the poles high enough to stand up. Sawyer, who is sometimes more hindrance than help in situations like this, was actually beneficial.



We finally got everything secured, blew up the air mattresses and ate lunch. In the bathroom, I noticed a flier for a ranger talk at the amphitheater and another for tours of Cone manor, both of which I thought would be fun. They used to hold ranger talks and even church services at the amphitheater when I was a kid, but now there's no money for the extra rangers. You're lucky there's even one on duty in some parks because of massive funding cuts. 

I didn't want to overdo it on my still-not-totally-better ankle, so we drove over to the lake and walked down the dam. We enjoyed watching a mother and ducklings darting in and out of the shadows along the river, paddling upstream, hopping on rocks and then riding the current back downstream. I don't recall ever seeing ducks there.


Sitting voluntarily … you know he must be sick! 

Then, we drove over to the picnic area so Sawyer and I could go wading. It wasn't a super hot day, but I thought it'd be nice to get our feet wet. Sawyer was not acting like his normal self. He was clingy and compliant. He was not bouncing off the walls and not fearless like he usually is. He held my hand everywhere. I knew the fever was coming back. So after skipping rocks and wading awhile, we packed up and drove back to camp. I thought we'd have time to change before walking over to the ranger talk.








The water was cold at first, but boy it felt good on my ankle. Nature's ice pack!



Sawyer fell asleep in the car while I read, and when I went back to the restroom, I checked the flier again, only to realize that the ranger talk was at Linville Falls campground, a good 30- to 45-minute drive. If we left that minute, we'd just barely make it. But Sawyer was still snoozing; we needed to change clothes and possibly grab some dinner. And it would be 9 o'clock or later before we got back. I decided it wasn't worth the rush. I let him sleep, and then we drove into town for a thermometer, more ibuprofen and some ice cream (my offer since we bailed on the dinosaur talk I had promised).

When we returned, we built a fire that would not stay lit (all the wood was wet from a shower) so we ate a lukewarm dinner again. And Sawyer had no appetite anyway, until it came to marshmallows. The fire was so crummy and we were tired, so we turned in pretty early. The rain started about midnight; it was steady but light enough for me to sleep a little. Then Sawyer's fever came back about 3 a.m. so I had to crawl out of my warm bed and get the medicine out of the car. He was very sickly acting, and I so it took me singing to him and letting him curl up with me (he made a nice heat source!) before he went back to sleep.

It was chilly and wet when we woke up. I wasn't about to mess with the fire after it rained all night. So I thought we'd drive into Boone and go to Waffle House, which turned out to not be there anymore! (Actually, it just moved but I didn't see it until after we ate somewhere else.) We headed to a diner for pancakes and somewhere dry. Since our Thomas tickets were for Monday, I wasn't sure what to do. We could go Sunday and SEE if there was space to ride Thomas early and then possibly pack up and go home. Or we could stick it out a bit and see if the day would get nicer. The sun seemed like it was trying to peek out, so I decided to stay. If nothing else, I thought maybe we could go to a movie or bowling, something inside if it decided to keep raining.

We drove back to the Moses Cone house on the parkway. It was foggy and drizzling, but not hard enough for us to really get wet. There were lots of horse riders there, so we followed their hoofprints along one of the trails. I knew Sawyer would run out of steam if we went too far and I didn't want to have to carry him back, so we only walked to the cow pasture and back.







The cows were very curious about us, but they did not like us getting too close. They were some of the prettiest cows I've ever seen. (After our farm visit in Pennsylvania, I am becoming a real cow lover.) The horse riders stopped to chat with us on our way back (one who was from Hickory noticed my Lenoir-Rhyne sweatshirt). When we got back to the manor, we made a reservation for a special tour of the home's 2nd floor, but it was a couple hours off. We looked through the arts center, watched a woman making corn husk dolls and strolled around a bit more before the tour.











I felt bad for the poor ranger. He was new to the area and was just learning the history of the house. He used notecards for his whole speech and didn't know the answer to most of the questions he was asked. I didn't learn much more from the tour than I already knew from reading the book on the Cones and their mountain estate (a book he referenced heavily).


Moses' and Bertha's Greensboro estate was right down the street from our house. It's been gone for years though, but the family name lives on all over town. Some descendants still live here, too.  






I had a good chuckle over one woman's questions all about the lights and whether they were original. These were run on calcium carbide pellets, not electricity. Not that questions are bad, but Ray and I always laugh about people's sheer ignorance on tours of historic places. "Is that modern invention original to this 150-year-old house?" "Was that dishwasher here 120 years ago?" Most people don't think very hard before asking questions or just don't have much sense.  



I also felt bad for Sawyer. He was quite hot by this time and was totally bored. But he was too sick to misbehave. I held him some, but mostly we'd move from room to room and he'd just plop down on the floor until the ranger was through speaking. As bad as I felt for him being sick, it was a nice change to not have to keep him from swinging from the chandeliers (his normal reaction to a boring grown-up tour).

We had wanted to rent a canoe and go out on the lake, but it kept raining and getting cloudy. So after making lunch at the campground, following some deer around and hanging out, we went back to Boone to check out our options for the evening.




In all my years camping here as a kid, I don't ever remember seeing deer in the campground in broad daylight. We've seen them two years in a row now. It's either a sign that there are a lot more deer or the campground is getting wilder (or both).

I couldn't get a cell signal on the parkway. There were no kids movies playing and bowling was expensive, so we found a cool playground, where we stayed for more than two hours.







When it was almost 7:30, I decided we should head out and get dinner. And then Sawyer pitched the biggest fit I've seen in months, maybe years. He was screaming, crying, trying to bite my arm as I dragged him to the car. It was ugly. I figured it was the fever talking, but I was still annoyed. We ate dinner at Wendy's and returned to go straight to bed. The campground was spookily empty. On our whole loop, there was only one other campsite occupied.

We had another fitful night of sleeping and fevers. I tried to stay on top of Sawyer's medicine, but it was clear he just didn't feel great. I wondered if I should bag the trip to Tweetsie, go home and take him to the doctor, but he still only had the fever and a little cough. I figured they'd tell me it was a virus and not give us any medicine. And I knew Sawyer would be crushed if we skipped Thomas.

So on Monday, we packed up everything and headed to Tweetsie. Sawyer was cooler when we woke up, and I hoped his fever had broken. Plus the weather was finally sunny. Tweetsie was a little more crowded than I had hoped for a weekday, but we had fun.




What you get when you let the Tweetsie guy take the picture … blurriness and three feet of dead space around us. 


Then we rode Thomas ...


and saw the cowboy and Indian show. 


Up the mountain we go ...


My new iPhone camera is not as great as I imagined. Or the lens was dirty.


The mouse mine train


Eek! A mouse! We've ridden this at least six times or more, and I still can't understand most of the words the mice sing!


Sawyer was very insistent on riding the No. 1 model of everything while we were there. No. 1 boat, No. 1 plane, etc. I guess that's his homage to Thomas?






It wouldn't be Thomas day without a Thomas tattoo!










We were surprised to see that the Ferris wheel has seat belts this year (in addition to the lap bar).  




Very disappointed that A) the good photographer wasn't there and B) they've switched to a horizontal frame and wouldn't shoot a vertical one of us to match the past two years. 

Now on our third visit for Thomas and our sixth visit to Tweetsie, it felt a little anticlimactic, at least for me. Sawyer was still impressed to see Thomas. After riding the big train, we worked our way up the mountain for the mouse train, the petting zoo and a few others before I told Sawyer we were going to head home. We were only there about four hours, but it was enough. He didn't want to leave, but he didn't fight it. He was asleep before we drove a mile, and he slept most of the way home.







I hope these are memories he'll remember. I hope he'll continue to like camping after some of these less-than-ideal outings we have. Or maybe it's still fun, even in the rain, for him? I hope so. Otherwise, I have a tent I'll sell you.