This is my account of our trip to Camp N Pack at Camp Timber Trails in Tolland, Massachusetts. Camp N Pack is an event put on by Alaskan Malamute Rescue of New England and is a weekend JUST for dogs and their owners.

We left Indiana Wednesday afternoon and rolled into Pennsylvania toward the evening. We kinda got the feeling that Pennsylvania does not like dogs! After pulling in to camp at around 9:30 pm and getting to bed around 1:30 am, we ate Peanut butter and Jelly sandwiches for dinner as we crawled into our sleeping bags and woke to our dogs howling like banshees, mainly just because that's what they like to do before breakfast. A Park Ranger tells us, there are no dogs allowed in the park. I tell him there's a sign that says dogs on leash...he says "well even in parks where we allow dogs, we only allow 2 so I'm going to ask you to leave". I was rolling up my sleeping bag and hubby was already loading up the trailer as I was speaking to him. I think he just wanted to get the chance to ask me to leave. HMPH! So off we went, hubby drove and I spent the next several hours trying to find our next camping area that would allow all our dogs.

The best place I could find was in the Poconos, still in Pennsylvania much to my dismay, a little campground called Mountain Vista. Camping at a place like this was a new experience for us. We normally choose large state parks whose primitive campsites are well off the beaten path, but since we discovered the 2 dog minimum at all state parks in Pennsylvania AND the surrounding states we had to look into other places such as this one. It was actually kind of nice. The bathroom and shower-house had a well lit SHORT path from behind our tent just up a short hill. The park office and firewood were located about 50 feet away. We were a little put off by the sheer number of RV's in the park but as it turned out, they were just stored there and there were very few people camping while we were there. The only real issue we had was getting a fire going. My boyscout husband can normally get a fire going in 15 minutes or less. With wet wood and no kindling it took about 3 hours to get a fire going. We were wet, tired, cold and hungry and determined to have more than peanut butter and jelly sandwiches again! Depression sat in and I gave up waiting and went to take a shower. When I got back, hubby had a roaring hot fire going, YAY! We skewered stew meat, onions, and green peppers and roasted them over the fire.

We had a leisurely morning with the Friday hike being canceled due to weather and several hours to spare so we had coffee and I made ham and cheese omelets on the cook-stove before we folded up camp and headed out.

We arrived at camp around 5:30pm. Registration was smooth and I hubby and I were bunking with our friend Patty. Danny (AMRONE volunteer) was at the ready with his ATV and little trailer and promptly got our stuff transported off to our cabin. While hubby blew up the air mattresses I met April and Jelly and then Dianne and JD, and Doris, found Patty and Sue (all fantastic people from my malamute forum) shortly after finding April. Dogs hung out in the truck while we registered, chatted and got everything tucked in at the cabin, crates set up, tie outs on trees and water dishes and dinner ready for the dogs. With the truck unloaded we hopped back in and set to put the truck down in the parking lot and walk the dogs back up to our cabin. As we started the short drive the skies began to downpour. We tried to wait out the rain in the parking lot but we were looking at missing dinner and had to get our dogs fed as well, so we ventured out into the downpour.

The dogs were amped from the wait and wanted nothing to do with walking carefully or slowly for us. The rain was coming down so hard neither of us could see and by the time we got to the dining hall we were soaked. We made it to the crates outside the dining hall where Doris and her husband Paul so very kindly held flashlights for us and helped us shuffle our dogs into crates to get us all out of the rain. As soon as we thought the rain was letting up we headed out to get the dogs to the cabin and then of course it down-poured on us again. Stupid rain! After talking with Sue I decided I wanted to enter Khuma in the weighpull competition pretty much just to get the experience of what it was like. Hubby and I called it an early night as we were wiped from the drive. I remember waking up at some point and hearing it rain and felling bad for Patty wherever she was getting wet coming back to the cabin. When she did come in I was so tired I'm pretty sure I thought she was Nova and said, Nova shush and then fell back asleep, LOL.

Saturday I woke at 6:15 am anticipating having to be at the weightpull weigh in at 7 am. It was cold and raining when I woke so I texted Sue to see if this whole weight pull thing was still on and she said yes so I grabbed Khuma and off we went to get weighed in. I got to the staff cabin where the weight pull was to be and noone was there so I hung out under a canopy until Dave came along. Khuma was not at all amused by the harness he had to put on to be weighed and did some dodging me before I got it on him. The look in his eyes as he was raised up was just priceless! Khuma weighed in at 92 pounds. I think there were only 2 others in his class and that was Nanook and Yukon. He did better than either of us expected. I think he pulled 500 and got himself a 2nd place ribbon at dinner that night. He's a screamer in that chute. He does a whole lot of talking before he actually moves the cart. We're going to be working with he and Nova both to get them into it.

We entered everyone into the novice pull that afternoon and Nova surprised me, I figured she would just sit down when she felt the weight but she wanted to get to me more than she wanted to sit there so she moved the empty cart and then moved it again later with a little bit of weight on it. Shiloh (our tiny little 42lb husky) moved the 200 lb empty cart as well, anything for a cookie! She looked too cute in her borrowed purple harness. Ranger did exactly as I expected him to do....turned around and walked in the direction of the cart and then started sniffing the chute, little shit...

Dinner was awesome. They had lots of good stuff to eat and the appetizers provided were oh so good. I won absolutely nothing as far as the raflle and silent auction went this year, last year I walked away with everything I bid on or put a raffle ticket in. I won the adult limbo competition and got a tiny little trophy, LOL. I had to cheat to win though, I'm pretty sure you're supposed to bend over backwards to get under the bar but when I asked if I had to do that they said no so I just did what I could do. I was having a good old time, had no idea who was left, then Joanne (AMRONE volunteer) said HEY, you won the adult part you don't have to keep going with the kids! LOL!

The wine flowed pretty freely at our table and we were all having a great time. We were given a sheet of paper and told to make as many words as we could from the words Amrone Mardi gras (Mardi Gras was the theme at camp this year, last year it was a western theme), Our table won with 2 pages of words and we won a big ole basket of tennis balls for all our dogs. Everyone took a few and somehow I ended up with the cute little basket, yay me! Patty, April and I and a few others helped clean up the dining hall after dinner and April was brave enough to go clean the mens room, Kudos to her for that, I wasn't going in there!

After dinner a bunch of Wildpaw forum folks headed to a cabin area where no one was staying so we could stay up, chat, have a fire and have a few beers. I might have made it through 1 beverage and I was wiped, cold and my back was killing me sitting on a stump so I wimped out and went to bed. April and Jelly ended up bunking up with us both nights since she didn't know her bunkmate. We were happy to have her!

Sunday morning we had breakfast and then hubby and I started packing up, we had ALOT of stuff! After we got packed up we took the dogs for one more romp in the off leash area and when we got back up by the dining hall we discovered Danny had already gotten all our stuff up by our truck, I love that guy! We ended up staying for lunch and I picked out several photos from the professional photographer after lunch so it was close to 1 when we left camp.

We drove and drove and then discovered we were going to be about 20 miles from Niagara Falls on our route home so we decided to stop and check it out. We weren't sure if it was going to be worth seeing at night but indeed it was and there were lots of people also checking it out.

Hubby drove through most of the states and I took over once we entered Ohio. I drove until around 2 am and then we pulled into a rest area to sleep in the back of the truck. We had decided earlier in the day we didn't want to deal with putting up and taking down camp again. WORST NIGHT EVER! There is not room for 4 dogs and 2 people in the back of a Tahoe. As big as a Tahoe seems, don't ever try it! We slept until about 8:30am and got home around 12. Now I need a nap!

Anyone that has never heard of Camp N Pack should check out AMRONE's website about it. It is a great time and well worth the 14 hour drive it takes US to get there! There are mainly malamutes and Siberians but there are a couple other northern breeds and some others as well, spaniels, dobermans and hounds!

Here are some pictures of our trip:
Camp N Pack 2011

Niagara Falls Detour

Oh man what an adventure! Thanks for sharing, that sounds like a great weekend. I will check out the pics when I get to work

Awesome pics! Looks like so much fun! Thanks for sharing. And the dogs look like they were having so much fun! They're adorable!

oh the pics really tell the story! all that mud!!! what fun!

Pfft. Facebook...

harrise wrote:

Pfft. Facebook...

Pfft. Fartbook .......................... I agree

Seems they have 90+% of the population where they want them.

Looks like alot of fun!

Facewhat? Good thing they all have all your info and are so cozy with the gov... However, aside from the rain and grumpy rangers, it sounds like a lot of fun!

It's easier to just upload them all to facebook and make the album public, rather than upload them there for everyone that wants them there and upload them to photobucket too.

QUOTE: We drove and drove and then discovered we were going to be about 20 miles from Niagara Falls on our route home.

Did you take the NYS Thruway? If so you missed my house by about 7 miles (Exit 48A). Niagara Falls is a great place to observe but the rest of the city is a real cesspool of borderline slum and thugs.

Here4thePics wrote:

QUOTE: We drove and drove and then discovered we were going to be about 20 miles from Niagara Falls on our route home.

Did you take the NYS Thruway? If so you missed my house by about 7 miles (Exit 48A). Niagara Falls is a great place to observe but the rest of the city is a real cesspool of borderline slum and thugs.

That night was a blur, but the roads I remember the GPS taking were 90 to 190 to 290, I think that's what they were, any of those familiar? Off 290 I believe it sent us to exit 22.