I ran into an issue as I was getting everything set up. The air mattress I had brought to sleep on was missing a vital component.
This was the air mattress that my friend's son had used for the week that he had been sleeping at our house. When they brought it back downstairs to pack up for our camping trip, they didn't notice that the plug was not screwed on. So I had an air mattress that couldn't hold air to sleep on for the night. Yay!
While setting up our tent, My son yelped, and told me that there was a centipede on the tent door. I looked, and there was indeed a long worm-looking insect on the door fabric, so I gave it a flap and the bug flew off into the nearby grass and trees. A few minutes later, he yelped again. There were seven centipedes on our picnic table. Aren't centipedes poisonous?
I went over to take a look and found that they were not centipedes at all. Instead, our picnic table...and indeed the entire state park...was overrun with caterpillars.
They were everywhere. They were coming down out of the trees like crazy, and often wound up clinging to our clothes. I can't count the number of times while we were at Brazos Bend that I felt a tickling sensation on the back of my neck or on the skin of my ankle, and grabbed a caterpillar that had crawled its way off my clothes and onto my skin where I could feel its wispy hairs. It wasn't gross or anything--because who is grossed out by caterpillars?--but it was pretty annoying.
Once everyone arrived, we headed out to hike around and look for gators, although because our last scout adventure we had done was on fishing, it seemed like most folks were more interested in casting their lines that seeing big reptiles.
That fishing fever may have been exacerbated by one of the scouts hooking a giant fish and bringing it all the way out of the water before it managed to slip its hook and fall back into the lake. They bemoaned the loss of that fish the whole rest of the campout.
We hiked around the lake, and saw a few alligators along the side of the path.
But mostly the cubs didn't seem to care about the gators or even the fish anymore. What they were interested in was...the Spanish moss? Yup, you heard it right. The kids only cared about grabbing Spanish moss out of all the trees that we passed. They balled it up and carried it around with them despite how stifling it became in the hot sun.
Their plan was to save it up to throw on the fire that night, and they just refused to believe us when we said that it was not dry enough to burn well, and would only smoke us all out if it didn't extinguish the fire altogether. I mean, it felt dry to their hands, so it must be highly combustible, right?
They called it Moss Man at first, then it evolved into Moss Monster, and then it became Anakin Mosswalker. My son was the one behind that final name. The Mandalorian has turned him into such a Star Wars fan that he thinks about it probably three times as often as most kids do. In his mind, the moss going on the fire was like the end of Revenge of the Sith where Anakin fights Obi-Wan on that lava world, and he catches fire and gets seriously burned before becoming Darth Vader. He said that Anakin Mosswalker was going to change and become Darth Smoke through this ordeal.
A little silly and over-the-top, but who cares, right? Well, surprisingly, it turned out to affect our day more than you'd expect. We reached the point in the hike where we could continue walking down the path to the spot where the most gators usually hang out or we could turn around and go back None of the others had ever been to Brazos Bend, so they had no idea what could be in store for them. I tried to convince them that they would regret it if they turned back now, but the kids all voted to take Anakin Mosswalker back to the truck and go look at another lake instead of keep walking.
So we turned around after only seeing two gators. Seems like a shame to me, like going to Disneyland bur walking out before going on the Matterhorn because you wanted to take your cotton candy out to the car so you could burn it later.
I wasn't going to let that moss into my car, but one of the parents with a truck was happy to bring it along, so it wasn't much of a fight.
We drove over to another lake that had a fishing pier, and spent some time casting our lines in, but the fish weren't biting. We went for a hike around the lake that turned out to take much longer than we'd expected, and by the time we got back we were all very tired.
We made dinner, and hung around the campsite for a while, and then we joined the other cubs for the pack campfire program. After the campfire we went back to our campsite for 'smores, and the kids finally got their chance to turn Anakin Mosswalker into Darth Smoke.
It was quite the smoky fire. The cubs kept throwing more and more moss on the flames. The moss didn't burn at all, but just sat there for several minutes before the heat of the fire finally cooked the moisture out enough for the moss to burn. It wasn't very pleasant.
Speaking of not very pleasant, it was time to go to bed. One of the other dads at the campout had extra sleeping pads, and he lent me one to use for the night, so things weren't as bad as they could have been, but the pads were pretty thin. They definitely didn't equal up to the fluffiness of a fully inflated air mattress.
The next morning, we packed everything up early because I wanted to see the rest of the family at some point this weekend, but My son insisted that we stay so he could play with the other cubs until they left. The rest of the dads got around to getting their tents all packed up eventually, and we said goodbye to Brazos Bend, but I'm sure it will only be for a little while. We'll be back again to that beautiful place.
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