Camping in France

I've finally gotten around to finishing a blog post. [gasp]  I just haven't been in blog mode lately... I just post the photos on Facebook and act like it's sufficient in letting people know what we do and that we're alive.  However, for some reason, I forget to email our non-facebook family members the link to our albums.  :(  I'm sorry.  After this post, I'll be sure to link them up on here.

Last month we went camping in Annecy, France.  It's about a 45 minute drive from Geneva and it is b-e-a-utiful.  On Friday afternoon, we crammed the clown car with every camping essential you'd need for living at Everest Base camp.... for one night... with the dogs... with a chance of rain... not knowing if we'd even find a campsite.  It was highly likely that our evening wouldn't work out well.  We wanted to go because we have planned a couple other more 'intense' trips with friends soon.  Also, Adam was SOOOO excited.  5-year old style.  So this was practice for us.  We want to make it appear that we know what we're doing when our other trips roll around.  Here's a map of our drive, courtesy of Google maps.

We headed off, got through the French border (quite busy during rush hour), found more traffic in downtown Annecy, and made it to our campground in about an hour and a half.... not 45 minutes.  Annecy is a hopping little town!  Most campsites didn't officially open until the Sunday after we were there, but we stopped at the tourist office and asked them which places were open and if they accepted two small beasts. Jackpot.

Off we went again... heading around the lake away from Annecy a little.

Another twenty minutes and we arrived at Au Coeur du Lac... which means 'heart of the lake.'  How cute. We wound up having to drive a little bit further than Annecy, but it was worth it.  It was a great campsite and even had toilets and showers!!!  I know.   That's cheating right?  We didn't take showers though.  Ewww.  I will mention that we were one of two spots that had a tent.  Seriously.  Everyone else had a camper or mini-rv.  We were entertainment for them.  Here's a picture of our spot.  This was taken the next morning after we packed up because I forgot to take a photo of our hard work. :(

Here's a run down of how our night went...

• Tied the dogs to a tree [the PETA freaks scream].  You don't know our dogs.  They're untrustworthy in new situations.  Plus, they lack thumbs and couldn't assist in setting up 'base camp.'  They sat there and looked cute while we struggled to keep our dignity in front of all of the people watching from their campers.  
• Laid the tarp down and proceeded to get out 'the big green monster.'  Our new tent was literally delivered 6 hours before we had planned to go... perfect timing.  This is a picture of it.  This is from Amazon and ours didn't exactly look this perfect when we finished setting it up.  The bottom picture is more realistic.  And yes, you can stand in it.

  

One side didn't cooperate with us.  It was our storage room, so we didn't care.  Saggy-lopsided room wasn't priority #1.  Eating was.

• Rocco escaped.  He heard a scream (from our neighbor's special needs child) and decided he needed to investigate... or save them.  He darted away from his tree and I had accidentally leashed his tag ring instead of his collar ring.  Ooops.  More entertainment for everyone... crazy dog being followed by crazy lady screaming.  I caught him and put him in the car.  He had to get used to the random screaming.  He loves the car, so he was happy as a clam.   
• Decided to let Brontosaurus off  his leash... and roam wild.  He did great and always does better when T-Rex isn't around to instigate trouble.  He followed me around the tent to stake it down.  Look at the sweetness!  

 

• Time to get grilling... the sun was going down.   Adam set our new grill up.  Yes, every single piece of our camping equipment is new.  We're not campers and we don't have a patio for a grill at our tiny apartment.  We have a tent and a large grill stored at our house in Phoenix, but we didn't bring them because we don't camp and we knew we wouldn't have a patio.  The new grill worked like a charm.  Grillmaster Adam cooked up some chicken, burgers, and veggie kebabs.  I may have over packed on food. 
  
  
  
  
  
• Decided to let T-Rex out of the car while the food was cooking.  He LOVES people food, so we knew the vulture in him would make him stay.  His favorite is vegetables, but he'll eat anything... even a bag of raw pasta noodles... or an entire loaf of bread... or even a pack of 8 waffles.  He was obviously ashamed of what he had done.  He got out of the car and followed me closely and turned sweet again.  

•  Dinner was amazing and the boys just lounged around with us on a blanket while we played cards, drank wine, and had a nice little chat about life... and how weird it was to say 'Oh yeah, we just went camping in France for the weekend.'  We still have moments where we don't believe we actually live here.

• T-Rex took off again.  The second time, he saw a young boy running back to his campsite and decided he didn't like it.  He chased him down and gave him a good 'barking at' while the boy peed his pants and scrambled to get into his luxury camper.  More embarrassment. 
• After we finished our bottle of wine, it was time to settle in.  Let me give you a quick reminder of our campsite:  lots of older people, kids, completely gated, a tiny French town, showers/toilets, office where you could buy snacks, ping pong tables, etc.  We were not in the wilderness.  However, once I laid down... the paranoia began.  I was sure that a serial killer was on the loose and targeting the only dummies in a real tent... easy victims.  The shadows on the outside of the tent, the sounds of nature, and the fact that we were sleeping in a bag... within another giant bag... with zippers... outside... all played into my mental lapse.  I didn't sleep a wink.  Seriously.  The movies Friday the 13th and Blair Witch even crossed my mind.

At one point (approximately 2am), I woke Adam up with my heart racing.  I thought I heard footsteps through the grass and our grill being messed with... stolen in fact.  Here's how it all went town

Me in whisper voice: "Adam! [poke, poke] Adam!  Someone is stealing our grill.  I think someone is outside!"    

Adam: [leaps up, unzips the tent in .3 seconds, and rushes outside ready to get the grill snatcher]

Me: [trembling with fear and hoping the grill snatcher wasn't going to kill Adam]

Adam: [comes back in] "Nope.  It's still there... and my socks are soaked."

Me: "I swear I heard someone walking around."

I checked the time and laid back down. 

• 3:00am :  Serial killer threat level: 10

• 4:00am

• 5:00am

• 6:00am: sun rises.  Serial killer threat level dwindles to a mere 0.  

• 6:30am: I woke up because I had to pee and our tent was slowly becoming a sauna.  
• 7:30am:  everyone was up and I was thoroughly made fun of for being such a weirdo and not sleeping
• We decided to take a little walk by the lake before heading out.  Here was our view:

 

  

Cue the mosquitoes.

 

• We got out of there quickly once we realized we were being attacked by mosquitoes.  It was such an amazing view though.

After we got back to our little campground, we took everything down and loaded up the car.  It came down pretty fast and we actually got the tent back in the bag!!!  Woohoo!  We were out of there by noon and on the road back to Geneva.  Once we got back home, I took a shower and then an 8 hour nap.  :)

We'll let you know how round 2 goes.  I'm hoping I'll get more sleep next time.   

Au revoir!

Ashley

It's Springtime!!!

We're pretty excited about this warm weather.  It hasn't been as hot as back home, but it's been nice.  Like, not wearing 18 layers and a coat kind of nice.  The trees and flowers are blooming, so on the way home from church the other day, I dragged we went and took some shots.  Here you go....

 Even the bees are starting to appear.... uh oh.

 2 bees stalking another bee.  It's probably a girl bee.

The Lord does some amazing work huh?  I can't wait until the tulips go crazy... about another week.  :)

Also, Adam's soccer football season has started up again.  I love watching him play.  The office team is orange this year... what a lovely color.

Wooooo!  Check out #10.  Owwwww!  Their team is undefeated so far... 2 games. :)  These two pics are the only good ones I was able to get of him.  Learning how to work the camera for sports shots is on my 'to do' list.  

Bon Weekend!

Up the Jura.

A friend from work had told me about a drive her and her boyfriend took up the Jura.  She said it was uuuhhhhmazing.  So, we took the little blue wildcat mobile and went.  Rocco found a new road trip spot.

There are two main mountain ranges in Switzerland:  the Alps and the Jura.  One obviously a little more well known than the other.  

We didn't plan ahead for this trip.  It was close, so there was no need for us to plan our route.  Plus, we had Genevive.  Our GPS.  Yes we named it.  Genevive sounds like Geneva.  Clever huh?  I know.  You're amazed.

We should have planned.

The red dot below is Geneva.

The orange dot is destination.

The red line is the route we took (white area being France).

The black 'angle' is the view.

A 30 minute drive took us an hour and a half.  It's ok though.  We didn't have anything better to do besides cry over not being home for Thanksgiving.  

And I digress...

The first thirty minutes was mostly highway driving... not interesting.

Off the interstate and into the countryside.

Then we crossed the border into France.  I have a feeling France doesn't give a hoot who comes and goes from Switzerland.  We've seen the French border patrol like maybe twice out of the twenty times we've crossed over.  Swiss are a little different.  Anyway, we drove up this mountainside road and then came to a field, a gravel path, and a sign that said "don't come in here" in French.  Awesome.  The picture below is the view of this little area, but the road got narrow.  Very narrow.  

Que the 28-point turn around similar to Austin Powers.  No guardrails.  In a manual car.  At one point I was sweating, had goosebumps, and was sure I'd need a fresh pair of underwear.  Did I mention we took the fur kids?  I think they were even scared we'd fall off the edge of the mountain.    

  

Now time to cross back into Switzerland.  WHAT?!  We didn't even need to go through France?  Thanks Genevive.

Don't ever cross into another country unless you have your passport.  EVER.  We got stopped by the Swiss border police and were reprimanded for not having them.  We had our Swiss permits, but forgot the passports.  Thought it would be ok.  We won't be doing it again.  This induced another episode of sweating and anxiety for me, while we waited and they confirmed we weren't terrorists.  All I kept thinking about was that they were going to confiscate our homeless looking mutts and we'd never see them again.  

We got back in.  

Next up?  A cute little town called Le Pont (Loo Pohn).  We got out and walked around the lake with the boys.  Rocco LOVES water.  He is the weirdest dog.  He's the only terrier I know that is obsessed with swimming and chasing ducks/swans/water creatures/people... while they're still in the water.  He got his legs wet, but no swimming.  We weren't interested in shuttling a wet pooch around.  The town was tiny and adorable.

Back on the road... look at this cute house!

Such a pretty day.  The reflection on the lake was amazing.

Time to start going up.  We needed to be above the clouds for the view apparently.  "Go little wildcat! Go!"

The road was flanked with stone walls for about 10 km.  It was so weird... and pretty.  

Aaaannnnd.... we made it.  Oh my.  It was totally worth the hour and a half drive.  

Ladies and gentlemen, the Alps:

Mont Blanc is the highest one you can see below... and the highest point in Europe.  It's on the border of Italy and France.  We can see the tip of it sometimes (if it's a clear day) when we walk the dogs, but not much else.  Geneva is sort of tucked in a little valley and has limited Alp views.  This is also where we'll be skiing soon. Adventurous?  Or overly confident about our ski skills?  I'd say both.  This isn't Paoli Peaks or Perfect North.  I'm predicting at least two broken bones in the Hughes family before we move back.  Probably both from me.    

The pictures don't do this justice at all.

 It was above the 'fog line' and you could see forever.  So beautiful.  I wouldn't mind waking up to this view.  

We also saw some crazy mountain plants.  

 God does some pretty good work, huh?

Time to go home.  At least we have a few Fall colors still around...

And that's why we went up the Jura.  Great little trip.  

Au revoir!