ROAD TRIP!! I will forever be excited to hear those two words.
In case you missed my last post and podcast, this was my first time tent camping without a man. I felt alone going in but my 13 year old made it very clear that I wasn’t alone at all. This experience not only gave me strength and confidence but it did him as well.
From our Beltway bathroom emergency 💩,setting up the tent, fearing we wouldn’t get the grill to turn off, loud nearby campers, our tent covered in spiders, my first time touching a spider intentionally 😖, getting the fire going, pouring rain, puddles in our tent, Hunter barely making it back UP the mountain to end our hike, pretty intense fog, to unforecasted STRONG winds overnight. In this episode, I share our experience and some inspiration to go try something new, without having it all figured out first. Come hang out. 🤍
The best time to go all in was yesterday. The second best time is today. Hope this episode inspires you to just go for it! 🙌🏼
ROAD TRIP!! I will forever be excited to hear those two words.
In case you missed my last post and podcast, this was my first time tent camping without a man. I felt alone going in but my 13 year old made it very clear that I wasn’t alone at all. This experience not only gave me strength and confidence but it did him as well.
From our Beltway bathroom emergency 💩,setting up the tent, fearing we wouldn’t get the grill to turn off, loud nearby campers, our tent covered in spiders, my first time touching a spider intentionally 😖, getting the fire going, pouring rain, puddles in our tent, Hunter barely making it back UP the mountain to end our hike, pretty intense fog, to unforecasted STRONG winds overnight. In this episode, I share our experience and some inspiration to go try something new, without having it all figured out first. Come hang out. 🤍
The best time to go all in was yesterday. The second best time is today. Hope this episode inspires you to just go for it! 🙌🏼
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Speaker 1:
Hi, friends, and welcome back to this special episode of Elevate with Erica. I can't not pour some inspiration into you, as it's just my nature, but it's going to come in the way of a little rundown on how my recent tent camping trip went with just me and my two boys. In case you didn't catch the last episode, I decided to venture on my first tent camping trip without a man. My mom raised me never to depend on a man, so I'm all miss, just figure it out. But I kind of lost her the last few years and I got stuck relying too much on someone else and I just needed this reminder for me that I'm capable and I'm stronger than I think and I needed that rush of overcoming something that I wasn't sure I could do. And so go push play on that last episode to hear more on that and how I prepped mentally to just go for it and just take this tent camping trip without having even started a fire before. But let's get to it, let's get to the rundown.
Speaker 1:
So I was hoping to leave at eight last Friday that would be Friday the 13th. I was hoping to leave at eight last Friday morning to head off on our five hour drive to Shenandoah National Park. But I had some last minute work that I needed to get done that morning before I lost signal for the weekend. I wanted to get an email out to my newsletter community and it was a lot to get packed by myself also for me and my boys, and so we left at nine, instead an hour behind, not bad. So you'll never guess the first crisis that I faced.
Speaker 1:
Our first crisis was that my youngest son had to poop while we were on the beltway. I shit you not friends, really. Son, all this driving and you tell me you're about to shit your pants while we were on the beltway. Parents, you know how it is. What happened is he was sucked into the game he was playing on the iPad and he waited until the last minute to tell me that he had to go to the bathroom. That's really what happened. Well, he was shit out of luck and it was a stressful 30 minutes till I found him the next bathroom. But guess what? It turned out to be the perfect stop, because my oldest son wanted Popeyes for lunch. I felt like he was mama's boy in that moment. Look, I don't eat a lot of fast food actually, I don't enjoy it that much but Popeyes I that. That's my favorite and so he wants Popeyes for lunch.
Speaker 1:
So we ended up at the Fair Oaks Mall in Fairfax, virginia, and we walk into the Dick Sporting Goods store entrance into the mall, and my boys agreed immediately that it was way cooler than ours here at home. They had like a batting cage and I don't remember what else. It was just massive and it was so cool. So then we walked out into the mall where we were just like our jaws dropped. It looked like something in a movie, like two stories, and just gorgeous and like packed and not a bunch of empty storefronts like our mall is. I never go to ours anymore. So anyway, we walked to the bathroom and guess what was right next to it? Popeyes. Okay, so two birds, one stone done Back on the road, but now we're about an hour and a half behind schedule at this point.
Speaker 1:
So my plans to get a hike in on Friday, while we had the prettiest day because rain was forecasted for Saturday, those plans for a hike on Friday were squashed and we wouldn't have been able to make it back to our site before dark, had we done it. And since I hadn't started a fire or used our mini propane grill before, I didn't want to figure it out in the dark. So we get to the campground anyway. You guys, like I said, it's Friday, the 13th, which also happens to be a good luck day for me Weird, I don't know. Fun fact. So I check in and guess what our site number is Sight number 13. I love little signs like that. I take them as little nods from the universe that I'm right where I'm supposed to be and maybe that's silly, but oh well. So we get to our site and we start setting up and we actually got our tent set up in about 20 minutes. It took me another 20 minutes to set up the rain guard and the mats and sleeping bags inside that we would be sleeping on. But not bad. Me and my 13 year old actually set that up faster than me and my husband have. Why? Because my 13 year old just did what I said. I'm just saying, okay, mom reads directions. But we did notice while setting up that a large group of 18 to 21 year old guys and a couple girls had started setting up their four tents on the site right next to us. I didn't even think that you were allowed four tents on one site, but I guess you are or they did anyway, I don't know.
Speaker 1:
Normally I plan this trip two to three months in advance because these campgrounds on Skyline Drive they fill up really fast for the month of October. Everyone is trying to see the leaves. So if I'm inspiring anyone to go take this trip, by the way, like you want to be booking it June, july, but this time I decided to go like just five days in advance to plan this. I've had a lot going on in my life. I wasn't really sure I was even going to do it and I just went with it. So anyway, I got what was left.
Speaker 1:
Normally I select a much more secluded site. I like to feel alone out there, and this site wasn't so much that. But my boys didn't mind, they didn't know any better and it was better than not going at all. But we knew those people next to us were going to be loud and they were. But thankfully I used a sound machine app thing on my phone and they went to bed usually only about 30 minutes after we did each night. So not bad.
Speaker 1:
We do know that they loved Colt 45, though they made that very loud and clear. It's funny because my oldest son was like mom, they don't even look 21. But like I know my older listeners here and I'm not saying that I'm old by any means, but the older you get like it's really hard to guess how old. Anyone is between the ages of like 18 and 25. You can't really tell. I'm like no, they're 21. I think they're 21. Well then they started talking loudly just as loud as they were about the Colt 45 that they were also underage. So, anyway, they had their fun.
Speaker 1:
So we got all set up and it was time to head to the nearest store on Skyline for some firewood Only two miles up the road, but it would have helped if I had traveled in the right direction to start with. So it ended up being about five miles altogether to get to the store. Anyway, we made our way there using mile markers because, yes, no signal. So we made it back to the site with our wood. The boys played in the woods for a little bit.
Speaker 1:
Behind our site, I decided to break up the grill and start cooking the burgers that we planned for dinner, and all went well with those, except I forgot cooking spray, foil and paper plates, but we didn't really need them either. It turns out you actually need a lot less crap than you think. I was just telling my oldest son this week that I liked it more than camping in our camper, because with a full kitchen and basically a mini house on wheels. You just pack a lot more crap and plan a lot more things that just keep you working more than you're relaxing. So burgers were cooked perfectly until it was time to take them off the grill and I couldn't get the damn grill to turn off, like you're just supposed to turn the knob and like it lifts up and that shuts it off. No, it didn't take long for panic to set in. The burgers are overcooking at this point and I have no plates to set them on. How am I going to get this thing to shut off? And also, like, not blow up, cause I'm thinking like this tiny little can of para-pane is just going to blow us all into little pieces.
Speaker 1:
So my oldest son was always right by my side throughout this. I love how he really was excited to take on the role of just like mom I got you. We can do this At home. You guys know, like parents of teenagers, like he's not up my butt anymore. He's kind of in his own world. He could be sitting right next to me and I have to say his name five times before he even knows I've been saying his name right. But at the campground it was totally different and you know how hard it is to bond with teenagers, and this experience gave me and my 13 year old that gift, and him and I finally got it shut off and we proceeded to eat our very well done burgers. They were still pretty tasty, or we were hungry, I don't know. But anyway, my oldest started getting the fire going and my youngest gathered some dry leaves, and it took us a little bit to get it going, but we did get the fire going. It was a nice dry night s'mores, no cell phones, just nature and conversation with my boys. It was awesome. We went to bed and we're hoping our camping neighbors wouldn't be out much longer, and thankfully they weren't.
Speaker 1:
Next day my youngest wakes us up a little too early looking for his stuffed animal and we couldn't get back to sleep after that. I was able to get one tiny little like half bar of signal, just enough to see the radar. Saturday rain was supposed to set in, but keep in mind that it was supposed to be done by five or six o'clock that night. It was gonna be a clear, pretty night. We did have that to look forward to, or so we thought. So we see that the rain should stop about 8 am that Saturday morning, and so I start getting myself together in the tent, getting dressed, doing my makeup, not even gonna attempt to do crap with my hair, right, it's just not possible. So I throw a hat on and I know I can start making my coffee on the grill soon as the rain is done. So we do that. We eat breakfast and it's starting to dry up and we decide to head the hour south to our first hike. Turns out it would be our only hike, but we didn't know that yet. So Dark Hollow Falls was the hike that we did.
Speaker 1:
By the way, intense amount of fog on Skyline Drive. I have some pictures of that too, or some videos of that too. Not only had I never drove on Skyline Drive, which has a couple scary parts and some people just fly down it In me I'm like little old lady but the fog was. You couldn't tell what was around each bend at the overlooks on Skyline Drive it looked like it was an overlook into just white, nothing. It was a very thick, thick fog in a lot of areas.
Speaker 1:
So, anyway, one more challenge to get through. It was okay. I took it slow. I didn't let any cars on my butt push me into doing anything I didn't wanna do. I would just kind of pull over and let them pass me.
Speaker 1:
So my son loved the way to the falls because the way to the falls was heading down the mountain right. So five minutes in, he's like, oh, I could easily do another hike today, mom, cause they knew I had two picked out to do Saturday, weather permitting. And I said, dude, it's only been five minutes Like let's just see how you are halfway through. So we get there. We get to the falls. It's gorgeous. It doesn't take us long to realize on the way back that it's going to be a little bit more challenging. And it's funny because on the way down to the falls people were passing us coming back up and I could hear them like heavy breathing and I'm like this does not feel challenging to me. They must be out of shape or something right. Well, no, we were all panting on the way back up to get to our truck and Hunter struggled the most. He took about five breaks and I denied his last break because I could actually hear the cars on Skyline Drive and I knew that we were almost done. So we get to the end of the hike. They take a picture they wanted a before and after in front of the board that described that hike and what it was called. It was a great little memory to have.
Speaker 1:
And so we get back in our truck and I'm like, okay, let's take this hour drive, another hour drive south on Skyline Beautiful drive. Some of the fog is lifted, we're stopping at some of the overlooks, but for the most part we take a beeline right to the brewery because by this time it's like already getting into one o'clock one something and we're all hungry for lunch. So we get to bald top brewing. I had picked out this brewery because it looked like one where my boys could run around. They had a huge outdoor space and it looked like it could be a lot of fun for them and they've never experienced anything like that. And so, yeah, that worked out well. But we get to the brewery, we order, they make the brick oven pizza there, right, and they're drinking their Coke and pizza was delicious, extremely fast food service as well as just the people that worked in there were so on top of their stuff. I mean, there was nobody standing around doing nothing. They were very kind and yeah. So if you're ever in the gosh I don't remember the name of the town right now. That's terrible, but bald top brewing is what it's called and I can't hold on. I'm actually looking up where it is as I'm speaking, because they deserve this, they deserve this amazing review.
Speaker 1:
Madison, virginia, bald top brewing company. Beautiful, gorgeous place. I wish we could have stayed for the live music that was going to start at six, but totally nice inside. But the outside is what was really breathtaking and my boys enjoyed the this huge open field. They had that. The boys walked in I'm going to be sharing a video and pictures of that too and they had this giant chessboard for the kids and cornhole, and I just can't say enough great things about it. Go check it, go check it out. The food was delicious as well.
Speaker 1:
So, anyway, we wrapped that up and we're like okay, we want to get back to our campsite. Like I said, it was going to be a dry, pretty night. We wanted to enjoy our last night there and so it only took an hour to get back to our site because we didn't take skyline drive on the way back. Taking skyline does slow things down. So we get back to our site and the boys play in the woods for a little bit Like panic when they both came out covered in like these tiny, almost lime green bugs. But after sweeping them all off, we start setting up the fire.
Speaker 1:
I was pretty proud of myself with bugs on this trip. This is just one instance. I'll tell you the other in a little bit, but I'm usually not one that would have anything to do with that. So but I did. I swept them all off, made them bug free, and so we wanted to leave ourselves more time to get the fire going tonight, because it had taken a bit the night before. But this time my 13 year old says mom, let me do it by myself. Okay, I did. I didn't even watch because I knew if I watched I'd want to go help. It's just in my nature. So I didn't even watch, except to grab a quick picture and video. By the way, I'm referencing all the pictures and videos that I'm going to be sharing because I will be loading up those things onto my social media after this episode is published so you can go check those out.
Speaker 1:
So he got the fire going and guess what you all? It starts pouring, really pouring its ass off. I have video of this too, and we had brought an easy up that we popped up the night before, and so we move it so that it's covering up the fire pit, but the fire pits kind of like in the corner of the easy up, you know, just to keep things safe. We don't want to set the easy up on fire just enough to keep the fire dry, and it was good, it was saving our fire, better than not having it at all. But it was so much rain and we were on a downhill slope, like our whole campsite kind of sloped down, and so eventually the ground on our site was so wet that it started to puddle and my oldest kept splashing his boots in the puddles and I was like not enjoying this at this particular time. And so I know, one time I just like snapped it and I'm like can you stop doing that? Oh, anyway. So we struggled to keep the fire going, but us three worked together to try and we did okay, and for those two hours it rained. It wasn't a warm fire, but we kept the coals warm and finally the rain stopped and so at 730 I was able to finally go out and light up the grill again and fire up some hot dogs. By the way, the grill turned off perfectly fine that time. So I think the universe was just messing with me the night before. Anyway, the rain is supposed to be done for the night at this point and we get the fire roaring again, and all as well. S'mores and we're watching Hocus Pocus on my computer that I had downloaded before the trip because I thought it would be a fun October themed movie to watch together. So we all get tired and we end up moving the movie to inside the tent.
Speaker 1:
I woke up at 1 am because the wind was so loud I don't know how my boy slept through it and I wanted to make sure that our easy up was still there, cause I ended up hearing a thump and I was like, oh great, this easy up tent has just crashed into my pickup truck, but it was still there, thank goodness. We hadn't tied it down because no wind was forecasted, but it was so windy that it was loud. I was afraid a tree was going to fall on us in there, and so I was up for at least another hour just listening, and then the pouring rain started. Pouring rain is pretty loud in a tent if you've never tank camped before, but my boys seemed to sleep through most of it and thankfully I was able to get some more rest too.
Speaker 1:
So we were all pretty cold that night and it got down into the low forties and the mats and comforters that we had under our sleeping bags started to get wet. My son had mentioned this to me the first morning. We woke up there. He's like he had for some reason lifted up like one of the comforters he was laying on and he's like mom, it's wet here and I totally downplayed it Cause it had rained a little bit. You know, that morning, before we got out of the tent and I totally downplayed it, I'm like, oh, it's just a little bit, it's fine, right, I just didn't want to panic. There was nothing we could do about it. I wasn't expecting rain to happen the second night, so whatever, right. But anyway, after the second night of rain, yes, the mats and the comforters under our sleeping bags were not just starting to get wet, they were actually drenched, and I would find this out when I started to roll things up. But we were starting to get little tiny puddles around, like the parameter of inside the tent too. So it was a good thing we were heading out. Thankfully that was our last night there, and so it's no wonder we felt colder sleeping on the wet ground that second night in those temps too.
Speaker 1:
So now to the packing of everything soaking wet. At first I had the idea that I would be able to dry things off. I had seen my husband do this before. I would be able to dry things off before putting them in the truck. But I quickly realized this was not the same situation that we had had before. Like, every surface on that campsite was soaked. It was that pouring rain puddled everywhere. So I ended up kind of just rolling everything up and knowing that I would have a lot of work cut out for me.
Speaker 1:
When I got home, when we were putting down the tent, we noticed that the entire top of the tent was covered in spiders my biggest freaking fear, you guys. And so I get inside the tent and I tell my boys to stand back, because I realized the best thing to do is to whack them off from the inside so they go flying right from the top of the tent. When I was actually like folding up the tent and we had all the poles out, there was still one large spider left. But you guys, I was so proud of myself. Again spiders biggest fear. I don't touch, I don't play with spiders, I know. And I actually grabbed the spider by one of his legs and I threw it. I think at that point I was just like eff it, I'm a badass. So I'm like spider, be gone. And I throw this spider into the woods, right. But then we ended up finding a lot of bunch of other tiny spiders that I grabbed paper towel for, got rid of them. Oh y'all, that might be one of my proudest moments of the entire thing, to be honest. So anyway, off to our five hour drive home.
Speaker 1:
We got home about two, I believe it was, and my boys were instructed to just go shower. So I started to unfold everything on the dry ground at home, letting it all just sit out to dry and then wiping it all down after it dried. It took a good four hours to really finish it all, because a lot of things were muddy too, like the cooler and the grill, and so I had to clean those. All the tarps and the tent and our easy up, by the way, got ruined that second night because it eventually did blow over thankfully not onto my truck and one of the legs snapped in the wind that was not supposed to freaking out. I left that part out a minute ago, anyway, so rest in peace to our easy up. But yeah, I finally got everything dry and put away. It took a good four hours to finish it all, and that's the only part of this trip that I don't recommend. If all of your crap is drenched and muddy, don't take all that on without help, because I was just exhausted and in a bad mood by the end of it. But still all worth it.
Speaker 1:
And we made it, you guys. We survived. We didn't get eaten by bears, we stayed warm, we got a hike in, we grabbed great pictures and made amazing memories, and we were ready to leave again this past Friday. We would have done it all over again. My boys made sure to have me assure them that we would be doing that every year from now on, and so I've been going forever.
Speaker 1:
But I was waiting on them to be able to handle the hiking to go and also the no electronics more so my youngest than my oldest. My oldest has always been very outdoorsy and he would have been fine. He was my youngest. I was concerned with and because of the way he struggled on that hike back up the mountain. After that first hike, that became our only hike. We decided that he was not going to be doing another hike, and so you know I'm glad that I did wait, because he barely handled that one, but I think he'll be better next time. He knows what to expect.
Speaker 1:
And you know something, by the way, that I was hoping to get on this trip that I didn't was clarity on a big decision in my life, and it turns out that clarity isn't some gift that comes out of the mountains, like I was hoping, and I still had a lot to work through. But what I got was confidence and strength and a renewed ability to trust myself. Priceless things and priceless memories with my boys, and I'm just so glad that they got to see mom figure that out. And I'm so glad that my 13 year old got a chance to work on his own confidence in the experience too, because even though I felt alone going in, he let me know that I wasn't alone at all and I came out of that experience like honey. If you see me in a fight with a bear, you pray for the day I'm bare because I got this and it it reminds me how important it is to shake things up in your life and get out of your ruts and out of always doing the same thing and going to the same places. Challenge yourself. That's what I can. I just can only hope that you can take from this episode and the last episode, because I was scared going in, but I realized, erica, you can keep looking up YouTube videos on how to do this thing, or you can just freaking go and figure it out. People are facing far greater challenges than setting up a tent and lighting a propane grill and starting a fire. I mean, let's just put things into perspective here. This is just a growth opportunity and most likely you're not going to die, so just go do the damn thing.
Speaker 1:
I had spent the last couple months crying myself to sleep some nights, not wanting to get out of bed some mornings, and all of that is okay. I know that. I know that I was grieving, but I needed to be reminded that I wasn't the only one in the world struggling and I was tired of watching life go by me. The world doesn't stop just because you feel like your whole world has crumbled. Stop feeling sorry for yourself and go live out this experience with your boys, and I want to leave you with this message if you're too in a rut in your life, need to shake things up.
Speaker 1:
If you're, if you're someone who has heard this experience and thought, oh, I could never do that, a challenge you to go, challenge yourself, shake up your life. Try something new on your own preferably and by that I mean without another adults. Help give yourself permission to try, and maybe it doesn't go perfectly as planned, but don't rob yourself of what it feels like to have overcome something that you thought you couldn't do. It's an amazing feeling. Go all in on something and share it with me. Drop me a DM on my social. I want to know what you're going to challenge yourself with. I want to root for you. The best time to jump in and go all in was yesterday, and the next best time is today. Until next episode, friends.
