Katie here.

As you all know mama has been camping a couple of times this summer. She tries to hide it from me, but she is foolish to think I don’t know. When she comes home from being away for a few days and starts carrying in a bunch of stuff from the car, well, it would be pretty hard for me not to tell, just from the way she smells.

If you know what I mean.

I think I’ve been pretty patient and I try to be understanding about her need to spend time on her own. Though why she’d want to I have no idea. Everybody’s life is enhanced if they have a princess around. Sometimes she doesn’t appreciate that, but I know, deep down inside, she knows it’s true.

Anyway, last week mama was watching the weather and the guy said that we were going to have a string of days when the highs didn’t get too hot and at night the temperatures would be really cool. My kind of weather!

And mama, being mama, grabbed that opportunity to reserve our favorite campsite at the local state park for us. Three whole nights of sleeping out under the stars! I was so excited!

Mama said it’s a lot harder to pack the car when I’m coming along. My crate and my princess pillow and my towels and food and snacks and water and bowls and leashes all take up a lot of space. I pointed out that she’s lucky to have me to keep her company and she decided it’s all worth it.

She wasn’t so sure the first night though. I got her up at 2:30 in the morning to go to the bathroom, and then just about every half hour after that. In case it was time for breakfast you know. We walked along the campground road, the whole place was pretty empty and the stars were so bright overhead, shining in the warm night air. Mama didn’t seem to mind taking all those walks at all.

She seemed really pleased that her fitbit said she had almost 4,000 steps by 7 a.m. Yep. Just call me coach. I’m all about fitness, I’m sure she’ll thank me someday.

The second day it was going to get pretty warm by the middle of the afternoon, plus they were starting to predict several hours of thunderstorms coming sometime in the evening or overnight. Mama thought about it for a bit and decided she didn’t really want to be trapped in a small tent with a wet dog for several hours. So she took me home to my dad where I got to sleep on my other princess pillow and enjoy the air conditioning.

She said she enjoyed sleeping in the tent and listening to the rain by herself. She said she didn’t have to go outside into the rain even once all night long! Imagine that!

The third day, our last full day at camp, she came home and got me and we spent the day taking walks around the campground or on trails in the woods, and once out to the beach to see how the lake looked.

We had a lot of fun. Each walk was pretty short, but I pranced right along, sniffing everything. I love walking in new places with my mom. After each walk we’d go back to our campsite and I’d mostly ignore the towels she provided and instead chose to sleep on the nice cool dirt. Mama spent a lot of her spare time while I was napping reading her book and enjoying the beautiful day.

The last night wasn’t so great as the campground began to fill up for the Labor Day holiday weekend, and one campsite partied all night. Mama was not happy as she couldn’t get any sleep at all. I, being deaf, didn’t mind at all.

We did spend a lot of time outside the tent that night, while mama stewed in the moonlight about all the noise. She finally settled down and read under the stars until morning when we packed up early and headed home. She stopped to complain about the noise to the ranger, and then we were home with daddy.

I have to say I was very happy to be home too. Daddy was there and he got me a treat and there was nice air conditioning, and stuff. I guess what I’m saying is that as long as I’m with mama and daddy it doesn’t matter if I’m sleeping outside or over one of my air conditioning vents, I’m a happy camper.

Hahaha. See what I did there? Happy camper. Yep. That’s me.

I don’t know if I’ll get to go camping again this season. Mama says she’ll try to get us one more trip before it’s too cold.

Frankly I don’t think it’s ever too cold, but that’s just me, mama seems to have a different opinion. She says we’ll have to go further away to get a quiet spot as the campgrounds are full just about everywhere even through the month of September.

I guess more people are figuring out what I always knew — camping is a perfect vacation!

Signing out for now, your camping guide Katie-girl.