Christian Motherhood: Black Canyon of the Gunnison Camping Trip

We spent Memorial Day weekend camping at Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park with our friends Laurie and Zach. Beautiful scenery and the canyon was breathtaking. Unlike at the Grand Canyon, at the Black Canyon you can see all the way down to the river from the rim and the sides are really steep. At a half mile down, it's not as deep as the Grand Canyon, but the walls of the canyon are black in color.

The trip out there made Rob and I want to turn around and go back home several times. What should have been a 5-hour trip turned into an 8-hour trip when you counted all the stops, one for a diaper blow-out and another to clean up after a carsick toddler (not fun!). Once we were there, though, the weather was perfect, warm nights and fairly hot days with good star gazing conditions.

We did a five mile hike on Saturday morning and rested during the hot part of the afternoon. On Sunday, we hiked to several of the overlooks around the rim, had a picnic, and left Sunday night as the cold weather and rain was moving in. Ashleigh did well with two nights, but was definitely getting cranky by the third day and asking to go 'back inside,' which we interpreted as she really wanted to be home. The trip home was uneventful, thank God, and she slept almost the entire way home minus our stop for Chinese food for supper.

When she awoke the next morning, she was thrilled to be back at home. Ahhh... it's the little things when you get back from camping - running water (and warm too), flushing toilets, and most important is the soft bed. We don't rough it too bad when we're camping with our camp chairs, pillows, and Thermarest pads, but we're still sleeping on the floor in a tent and the ground is pretty hard. I love that about camping - how you appreciate the little things when you get back and see how blessed we are with all our comforts of life.