Family camping!

After the success of last weeks camping, Chloe and I decided that we should make it a family thing. We bought some more camping meals at Au Vieux Campeur, a really inexpensive (30 euro!) tent for the kids, called the Arpenaz 2 in the afternoon, picked the kids up, managed to get both of them to go to the bathroom in an actual bathroom, then drove up to Charmant Som. We had tried to get a reservation at the Auberge for dinner, but it was fully booked, which made Chloe very sad. We actually asked again to see if a space had opened up when we got there, but no luck. We set off for Zoe and my super camping pitch and then set up the tents. I was somewhat amazed to find that the Decathlon craptent was actually decent! For one thing, it had almost exactly the same design as our multi hundred dollar Sierra Designs tent. The poles look pretty cheap, and the stakes appear to be made of solid steel, but the material looks decent, and the whole package is a similar weight to the SD tent. At literally 10X less money, it will be interesting to see how it holds up, but even if it doesn't... Anyway, this was supposed to be the "Kids only" tent. Chloe and I of course realised that at some point during the night, the situation would probably evolve to one parent in one tent and one in the other, but we can dream, can't we? The kids loved their tent:



and there was enough space to set them up next to each other

and what can you say about the place? magnificent
Next, dinner time, which was riz cantonnais again, a chicken curry, and gratin dauphinois.

I've decided that potato meals are the way to go: you get the greatest volume of food per weight, and it tastes pretty good. The other stuff is nice, but patates are where it's at.

The sun eventually set, and the cows migrated again, this time with a horse. This caused much chagrin to the kids: was it a mean horse? Would it trample us in our sleep? Would it poo on our tents? Would the *cows* follow the horse and then trample or poo on us? It was a long conversation

The previous camping trip, I had seen a huge number of satellites and rocket bodies in the sky, identifiable by the excellent Skyview app. This time we were hoping to see some of the Perseid meteor shower, since it was almost the peak. And we were lucky and saw some big ones. Unfortunately, the kids have little patience for staring up at the night sky and did not see any.

After another somewhat painful night, we were treated to a beautiful sunrise

And two very tired kids who amazingly had stayed in their tent and not woken up the entire night! I was amazed.

Luckily, I had brought coffee

And chloe had brought croissants and pain au choc