How to Camp… with cake!

Yup… what?

‘sniff’

EEEeewwwwww!!

It’s the morning before I get my little munchkin back from a week long pause from loony land, as I like to call our happy home when she’s here with me. She shares her time one week with us and one week with her Dad and such is the world we live in today. I can only assume. So while sipping my morning java and watching the sun… no… the fog come up, and in anticipation of her coming home today, I thought I would watch some family videos that we took. One particular clip has my coffee now running down my shirt collar, finely dotted across my laptop screen, and more than enough on the center of my keyboard that I’m hopping it holds up until I’m finished typing!

A picture is worth a thousand words, right? Well, this one has to be worth a whole lot more I must say. This one in particular is from a camping trip we took two summer ago (almost three now) when she had turned only seven years old. I will do my best to attach some photos to this blog to help illustrate what I’m about to tell you.

Now, I loved going camping as a young boy. Thought it was a whole new world when you stepped out of the van, into the silent, woodsy scented territory. The summer heat crackling in the trees. Unseen insects making new sounds. The faint murmur of other campers setting up their site.

‘Sniff’ ‘sniff’

Ask my parents however, and will tell you otherwise about my love of camping. Yet, when I look back I remember juicy, crispy corn-on-the-cobb roasted over a campfire the size of a volcano (in fact I think one was). You know, the kind where the longer the tree branch you use to skewer your corn, wiener, or marshmallow the more eyebrow/eyelashes you would have when you got back in the van to leave. I can picture the hundreds of multi-coloured bubbles we would blow. The size of small cars wobbling, warping, and shifting places through the air. I also slightly recall how that soapy solution actually un-waterproofs a tent. Hmmmmm? Oh and then it was that exciting, un-annoying chirps of the morning crickets and the first early morning creep from the tent to find the always “fresh, tidy, and inviting” campground poopy-shack. Best relief of the day! It seemed all so inviting in the back of my mind. At least, that’s how I sold the idea of camping to my wife and daughter.

So let me set a few things straight here right off the bat. As some of you may not know, my wife and I were the best of friends for almost twelve years before we finally got married in 2011. And while Clara is not my biological daughter, she most certainly has my attitude, perseverance (insistence?), and over-the-top flare for the dramatic so she simply has to be “part mine”… in some fashion! So on this particular camping trip we were still only “friends” however I had finally decided to pop the big question and ask her to go on an official date with me. With us spending so much time together we were certain that Clara already knew what was up. With a seven year old, who knew me best as “Uncle Steve”, I also knew that I had to play this one very, very carefully. If I wanted the transition from being the funny, silly Uncle that visits Mom everyday, to something more permanent, I would have to incorporate Clara into this dating game plan.

So one morning, while driving her to school, I quietly slipped into the conversation what she thought about me asking her Mom out on an “official” date. We were already chatting about how she liked to spend time with me, that I was ALWAYS around, and I was telling her that I really liked Mom lots and her too of course. After a brief pause, and me thinking that it was not the best idea to pitch this on the way to school, she shifted in her seat a little and get this... to my complete and utter surprise she asked me if we could make it a party… and what kind of cake we were going to have. “Uuuuhhhh what’s that?” I chirped. I looked back in the rear-view mirror to find her un-surprised, watching the neighborhood houses flick by, and drawing a shaky smiley face (again) on the inside of my window with fingertip and moist breath. “We have to have a cake. It’s like a celebration.” She said eyes wide open, mouth curled up on both sides, and looking way too excited for 8am. I knew right there that I might as well be taking the two of them on this date… that was apparently going to be a celebration… with a cake.

Before the week was up I decided that I would introduce the ladies to camping. And, during this camping trip I would ask Mireille, with Clara’s help of course, out on an official date.  Of course this was no ordinary camping trip because it will be a camping/party/with cake camping trip. I let Clara pick out the cake… she choose an ice-cream cake… and you know where what one’s going. Now, I won’t go into great detail about the prep work and execution of how we took an ice-cream cake from DQ camping but I will say this. Going camping, out in the woods, with and ice-cream cake, with a seven year old, and trying to keep it a surprise is a feat all in itself.

I loved that Clara was on board to help me, she helped decorate the cake, and I think we wrote something to the effect of “Will you go ouy with me” across the top in alternating colored icing. I know that the “T” and the “Y” on a keyboard are side-by-side and you are imagining that that was a typo. It wasn't  How we managed a typo, with icing on a cake, is still a mystery to me. Here’s the best part. On the cake are a dolphin and a killer whale. Now, I’ll leave all sorts of doors wide open for you to think upon that one but I will tell you that in the dolphins defense  it has been documented that they are not always the victim of the killer whale and in fact have been known to fight back to the killer whales demise. Hey, the pickings were slim at DQ, the choice was a kids, and I will just leave it at that.

Of course the camping trip it self, the whole getting everything in the car undetected, an extra cooler that no-one as allowed to open, the entire thing is a whole other story. But the cake, well that’s the real story today. How do two and a half people eat an entire ice-cream cake, in the woods anyway? You can’t let good ice-cream cake go to waste, right? After both Clara and I pulled off the greatest proposal ever to Mom for a date, we both dove into our celebration ice-cream cake while Mom watched on and laughed at the two of us. We were so relieved to find it still fully frozen and everything perfectly intact. She popped off the clear dome lid, and there was our brightly colored “Will you go ouy with me” cake. The dolphin and the whale both looking like there were playing with one another, dancing in the ocean. Really, the all know the whale was probably about to fling the dolphin fifteen feet out of the water, breach the surface at top speed, and swallow it whole. Just as we were about to do!

After eating as much of the cake as we could she popped the dome back on and returned it to the cooler. I figured it might even last till the end of the weekend if we were careful not to leave the cooler open for long periods. The cooler said something like “Ice guaranteed to last five days” on the stickers still plastered to both sides. That’s a bold statement, but the reason I bought that particular cooler. Anyway, I think we may have gone back later that evening to carve off another small sliver each. Even then, there was still just over half of the cake remaining. “It can wait… for breakfast!” I whispered to Clara. Following a short night of sleep, the sun sure comes up earlier when you’re sleeping in a tent, Clara and I both sauntered out to greet the quiet morning. With Mom still sleeping we both crept over to the cooler to sneak a yummy slice of celebration cake for breakfast as I had promised. She got out two plastic forks, napkins, and two small wax-coated plates as I opened the cooler lid. I closed the cooler lid. I looked and Clara and she smiled, let out a he-he-he. Little thing knew exactly what I was about to pull out of the cooler!

Since a picture is worth a thousand words, I’ll let these ones say it all. I will close in saying that we swapped forks for spoons, used that clear plastic dome to its full potential and suggest that if you ever want to take an ice-cream cake camping… make it yourself… and freeze it in a bowl!

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