Adapt and overcome

Adapt and Overcome

This is a slogan the US Marine Corps likes to use, I heard it A LOT when I attended air refueling school in my early years in the Navy.  Back then it meant things like, deal with the fact you are the only girl in this school and the closest women's bathroom is 3 buildings away.  Yes, I will walk in when you are at the urinal and no, I don't care.   But that is a different story for a different time.

This week's story is about our Father's Day trip to Glacier National Park. 

This is a view from Rocky Point a quick .25 mile hike from our camp spot.

 



 Every picture in today's blog is going to look beautiful and like we are having a great time.  Well, the park is beautiful and we did have a great time, but I also don't take pictures of the issues that happen along the way (usually). 

We almost always go camping Father's Day weekend, it is either right after or before my husband's birthday and it is usually the start of summer weather.  For us going camping means getting our pop-up camper out of storage and loading it up for the long weekend.  This year I forgot to put a tarp over the camper when I put it away for the winter, that was the first thing I did wrong.  The second thing I did wrong was I waited until mid-May to call our RV dealership to schedule the camper to get summarized, this is a quick tune up and flush of the anti-freeze from the water system.  The RV dealer was several weeks behind but assured me they could get us in on June 13 at 8:30am.  This gave me a day and half before we left to get it together. 

Issue 1:  The RV shop was really behind and we didn't get the camper until Wednesday (14) at 4pm, we were leaving at 8 the next morning and my sister had arrived in town from Texas. 

So, I made mistake number two and left the camper closed and took the RV shop's word that we were good to go.  I shoved everything we would need (that isn't already stored in the camper) inside Thursday morning and off we went. 

This is beargrass and it is everywhere in GNP right now.  It is one of the biggest blooms anyone remembers and it makes for lovely pictures and hikes. 

 

Thursday the weather was overcast and chilly but not bad.  Lucky for us we had decent clothes and we happy for cooler temperatures.  We decided this would make hiking more enjoyable than heat.

We got to the park and got our camp site.  It was perfect!  I had picked it out online and am very familiar with the campground so I knew what I wanted.  This was where the adapt and overcome started the play out. 

• Camper battery is dead -- No problem, we can hook it to the car to raise the pop-up and then use the slow charger we brought to charge it up.
• The entire left side of the camper is wet and covered in mildew because it appears the fan vent leaked.  -- No problem, we only have the three of us, we will use that for storage, sleep on the right side and clean it up when we get home.  We have a dry comforter, 1 sheet set and 1 sleeping bag, we can pull the extra blanket for the car and we can just turn up the heater. 
• I forgot to pack ketchup and mustard for the brats- Ah, who cares we are hungry!

S'MORES!!!

About midnight on Friday it starts to rain, and rain hard.  We have to close the windows (except one, we are using propane heat) so it is now really damp in the camper.  Sydnee alerts us to the fact that the roof is still leaking.  Crap!  Ok now what....  Yay!  I have duct tape and we have no more leak, for now. 

Friday morning, it is still pouring, so I make coffee and hot cocoa with the camper closed except one window.  Normally, I would be running the vent fan on high but it isn't working.  We eat breakfast and decide to go for a drive and hope the rain breaks long enough for a couple short hikes.  We luck out and it just drizzles so we are able to get a couple quick hikes in and see some of the park.  We have a picnic in the car (it is raining again) and grab some cute photos of our rain coats. 

Friday:  This is Avalanche Falls, the hike to the lake was closed later that day because of bear activity and we felt it was too rainy to hike so we just walked the Trail of the Cedars.  That is a boardwalk hike and is great for anyone.  It has a wonderful variety of trees and views plus it is only .8 miles. 

Friday night, we return to the camper for dinner and realize we have a serious condensation issue inside from me cooking earlier.  Our water pump isn't working either so now I need to cook but am going to have to improvise to wash dishes but I am worried about boiling more water as the ceiling on both ends of the camper (the fabric parts) are dripping.  Did I mention it is still raining, hard again.....  We are all wet, the inside of the camper is wet, and we are hungry. 

Hmm... do we go home? 

NO, OF COURSE not!

We got this.  I open the vent a crack, put a bucket underneath it in case rain comes in (it did a little).  I open a couple windows on the non-wind side and make us some spaghetti.  Ok, that worked.  We got the dishes cleaned up (pretty good) and we changed into our jammies. 

Hmm.. it's getting kinda chilly in here now that the stove is off.  I must need to turn the heat up. 

Ugh... we have used all the charge on the battery and the heater has an auto igniter that doesn't work when the battery is low.  NO HEAT.  It's still raining.....

Ceilings are still dripping.

This is bad, but we are laughing.  We are together and it could be worse, lots more things could be going wrong.  We were pretty sure the rain would stop at some point, but we weren't sure because we had no cell signal and couldn't checked. 

Off to bed, I ran the stove for about an hour and it warmed up.  We all three cuddled up together and we put on extra jammies. 

After a couple more times of turning on the stove throughout the night we woke up, mostly warm to a slow rainfall (both inside and outside).  I made some coffee, hobo omelets and Jacob went off to shower.  After he was gone for a while (an hour and half) Sydnee and I got worried, turned out there was just a long line.  But the good news was the rain stopped and the sun was peeking out.  I made the call to open everything up in hopes it dried out, and just wipe down the breakfast dishes. 

Saturday turned out great!  The camper dried out, no more rain inside!  We hike from our campsite five miles up the lake side and had a blast.  We ate a great meal in Apgar at Eddie's so I didn't have any dishes to do and we returned to a camper that was ready for the night. 
We made it through the night using the stove heat method again

Saturday on the trail!

 

Sunday, we packed it up in a light rain and drove home.  We had a couple other issues along the way that weren't worth mentioning but overall we had a blast.  We love camping and hanging out together so although our trip was a huge mess, we made it work and we had fun. I could have let any of the problems stop us but I didn't and I think that was a great lesson for Sydnee.  She never once saw mommy throw a fit, we just worked the problem and came up with a solution.  Was I mad, of course, I still haven't called the RV dealer because I don't want to sound like a raving lunatic when I scream at them.  Would we have been more comfortable without half the issues, sure but I doubt we'd have had more fun. 

We figured it out and we moved on.  This is a lesson I learned from my mom and I want to pass down to my kids.  Just because something doesn't go as you planned doesn't mean it has to ruin your day, you just keep moving forward.  Or as my Staff Sargent would have said "You have to adapt and overcome, Leeper, just make it work!"