We went camping this weekend to Camp Swatara. We were smart and decided to go an extra day. We left Thursday evening and stayed until Sunday.

The plan was to leave soon after G returned from work. He even came home early for the occasion. In past years, we have gotten up there so late on Friday that it's dark, and we've missed the group dessert time with all the other families from church.

But not so this year. We got smart. We went a day early. Planned to eat when we got there after we set up.

Well, what do you think happened? Yep, we set up in the dark sometime between 7:00 and 10:00 PM, having eaten on the drive out.

I will start by saying we do get credit for arriving before it actually got dark. It just took us forever to get the camper set up.

First. We got the camper where we wanted it in the site. Forward and back. Forward and back. Forward and back. And maybe another forward and back.

Second. We set to unhitching the camper from the car. But the handle to the wheel jack, what raises and lowers the tongue of the camper, was too close to the spare tire on the CRV. So we couldn't lower the wheel enough to raise the camper to get it off the hitch. We did know this could be a problem depending on the alignment of the camper and car. It's a very annoying problem. G used the car jack to raise and unhitch the camper.

Third. We needed to level the camper. What fun that turned out to be. To avoid some rocks and gullys in our site we had the camper on a slight incline. To get it level, the front stabilizer jacks would need to be open too far to really stabilize the camper well. After consulting with a neighbor camper from our church who also came a day earlier, but actually during the day, G decided to rehitch (remember - not as simple as the word sounds) the camper and move it over some to a flatter section of the site and unavoidably closer to the rocks and gully. (Which turned out to be not that bad.)

Fourth. After about the thirtieth time he moved the camper forward and backward, G got it to a better spot.

Fifth. Unhitching. It think it went better this time.

Sixth. Raising the roof. After unhooking the hooks, the top goes up, the sinks flips up, the door comes down, a bed transforms into a table and benches, B organizes stuff and makes the beds, and children (who behaved rather well stuck in their seats the whole time) finally go to bed. Parents follow shortly after.