This camping trip took place last weekend so this post is about a week late, but I wanted to stick with writing a post for each camping trip in April, so here goes (from memory). I took a better camera with me (an Olympus 770SW) and the pictures from the trip can be found here.
I decided not to camp down by the river this time, but instead camp in a clearing about 1/4 mile from the river. The wind blowing off the water made the previous two trips very, very cold and it made keeping the fire going difficult. This trip was much warmer than the previous two, at least during the day. The temperatures reached the upper 60's on both Saturday and Sunday, but the thermometer I brought with me measured a low of 24.4 degrees Fahrenheit during the evening, and it definitely felt it.
On Saturday afternoon I hiked down to the river to see how much ice had melted. I found what looked to be a wolf print (although on second thought, it looks more like a large raccoon print), and after taking a few pictures and walking around, I returned to camp to spend the evening practicing various knots, keeping the fire going, and reading Ender's Game.
I awoke around 3AM Sunday morning with freezing cold feet and needing to pee. There was no way I was getting up and losing the small amount of heat that remained inside my sleeping bag, so I toughed it out. It's amazingly difficult to fall asleep when your feet are cold and your bowls are telling you to get the hell up.
I finally got up around 6AM to relieve myself and decided that dealing with the early morning cold and getting the fire started was, in the long run, a better idea than trying to go back to sleep and generate my own heat. There were still some hot coals in the fire from the night before and I managed to use them to get the fire started again.
I watched the sun rise and waited desperately for it to come up over the trees to heat the surrounding air. When it finally did, I spent some time exercising and and laying in the clearing relaxing in the sun. It's early enough in the season that there are almost no bugs. A few more weeks and the mosquito's, ticks, black flies, ants, and all the other bugs will be out in full-force.