Well hello there! How is your December going so far? We are getting our Christmas on, slowly but surely. Doing all the things, you know. I wanted to share our annual Thanksgiving camping trip with you guys before I move on to everything else clogging my brain. Besides. I told you I would, right?
If you’ve been following along, you know that we go camping every year for the Thanksgiving weekend, just me and that husband guy. You may have noticed that it gets pretty stinking cold where we go (Mogollon Rim, Arizona). And this year, we had the option to take our parent’s camper. I think I caught air when I jumped all over that idea! Our Thanksgiving camping tradition got a whole lot warmer with the addition of solid walls, a generator and heat cranked full blast, let me tell ya!
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Sadly, I didn’t take any camper pictures for this post or us camping in it even. Too busy freezing my arse off and enjoying life, I guess. BUT. I did get some photos, and we made an amazing turkey on the fire this year, so stay with me for those 😉
We’ve tried cooking a turkey breast over the fire before, but if I recall correctly, it wasn’t exactly a success. This year, though? Holy mama. That turkey breast was PHENOMENAL. I mean, exaggerate that word by three and that’s how good this turkey was. I couldn’t even resist nibbling on it, and I don’t eat meat. It was that good. Tender and juicy and fell right off the bone! We cooked the breast in a dutch oven for four hours in a bed of coals, surrounded by fire. I’ll have to do a whole post dedicated to the recipe and method, because you NEED to try this turkey. Oh. My goodness.
In he meantime, here are a few pictures.
Joe always goes chopping mad, I swear. We left part of his handiwork behind because he cut so much dang wood…
Thanksgiving Camping Tradition: 2016
Taking the trailer for this year’s Thanksgiving trip sounded like all fun and games to me, but I didn’t realize that towing such a big trailer and finding a place to set it was going to be such a cumbersome thing. The elevation change from Phoenix to the Mogollon Rim site we chose is 6,460 feet. It can get a little slow-going in a car or truck, let alone dragging a 30 foot trailer behind you. So there’s that. Then, finding an unoccupied campsite or one not surrounded by other campers, then one not filled with mud and snowmelt. Talk about an event – a frustrating one, to say the least. After hours of driving down narrow dirt roads, backing up and turning around, sweating and swearing and shaking our fists at all the other campers ruining our good time, we were spent.
You wanna know what happened next? We retreated and headed back down the mountain, calling the whole affair a wash and sulking about spend the weekend on our couch instead of out in the wilderness. In the midst of this, we had the idea to call our contractor, remembering he was going to be in the same area at his family cabin. Mind you, this was going down on Thanksgiving day and at prime holiday dinner time. Don’t you know it, though, he answered the phone! He walked us through getting to the perfect spot, just a bit higher in elevation than we were. He made sure we got there safe, checked on us the next day when him and his family arrived to their cabin, and even had breakfast waiting for us on our way back home. Seriously. Pretty sure we can refer to him and his wife as buddies of ours now, right? Such good people!
So, thanks to a buddy of ours (and his family!) we had one of our best Thanksgiving camping trips yet! I’m so grateful and happy for the break we needed before the chaos of December hit.
I hope you had a great Thanksgiving! What are you doing to prep for the holidays? I’d love to hear!
