Well, we did it. We had Thanksgiving at Tower Camp.
The original plan was to spend the night up there the night before
but the weather did not cooperate. We were under a hard freeze
warning for Wednesday night with the temperature at camp expected to
be 22 degrees.
I talked big for a while and then got real. This Florida girl does
NOT camp in below freezing weather.
I also chickened out about cooking everything up there. The Island
King was determined to cook his turkey in a bucket but I cooked
everything Tuesday night and then planned on warming it up at dinner
time.
Both decisions turned out to be wise ones because I woke up
Thursday morning with a terrible cold. Sore throat, bad cough, elephant on my chest – the works.
I was moving extra slow, the kids were grumpy, the Island King was
grumpy and we were late leaving home. Not exactly a great start but
we were moving.
I took a bunch of cold medicine and by the time we got to camp I
was a little on the loopy side. At least that's my excuse for finding
the fact that the Youngest got mad, took his chair and went way out
into the field to sit, hysterical.
He got over whatever it was that he was mad about and showed back
up a few minutes later to help get things ready.
My inlaws arrived
The Island King got his turkey cooking in the bucket
And then it was time for some target shooting
The Island Girl has never wanted to shoot before but she decided she wanted to try her grandmother's 22. She got some pointers from her grandmother
Some from her dad
And then my girl hit the target dead on 4 out of 6 shots. Excellent shooting!
The Youngest was not happy that his aim wasn't quite as good as his sister's
Uncle R shot a shotgun for the first time in years and decided that he needs to come up and shoot more often.
I bought more Shockwave and brought some flour and tomatoes so that we could have a nice Thanksgiving explosion - but that didn't work out as planned.
The rifle I used to shoot the pumpkin has a scope on it but the rifle we had with us on Thursday is new and doesn't have a scope yet. The Oldest spent some time trying to site in the iron sites but didn't have much luck.
His father took over and even though he didn't do much better he proclaimed he could make the shot.
The problem with the Shockwave is that the container has to be hit right in the center or you don't get the full effect.
The Island King was confident so we put a pound of Shockwave under a bag of flour and got ready for what we hoped would be a cool explosion.
He hit the target a little too high and all we got was this.
The bag of flour didn't even fall over.
Which is really disappointing when you're expecting this.
Lesson learned - must have scope.
It got dark just as the turkey finished cooking and I didn't take the first picture. My cold medicine had worn off so my energy level was running pretty low.
We ended up with quite a spread and believe it or not that turkey was pretty good.
Which is surprising when you see how the bird was prepared.
The day didn't go exactly as planned but we didn't have to go to Golden Corral for dinner and there was no big hulla-ba-loo about anything so I'd say the event was a success.
We are definitely going to do this again but hopefully next time I won't be sick.
Labels: Done
