Husband and I, early on in our relationship, wanted to be more outdoorsy. We were more outdoorsy than many people. I worked five summers at Scout Camp and he grew up on a ranch. We enjoyed camping and hiking and the like, though were far from the extremes some people were at. Still, we thought getting out and about would be good for our family.

And, yeah, we did stuff, though work and kids mostly got in the way. But we have renewed our goals and went camping earlier this week. Nothing fancy, just two nights at a campground up the way.

Jade and I came the second night, Ruby and Layne having gone up the first night for a daddy-daughter date. Ruby has been quite enamored of the concept of camping.

The trick was, how were we to do Jade’s cystic fibrosis treatments? Jade uses the InCourage airway clearance system, which needs power. At one clinic in anticipation, we asked about and were trained on how to use those cup things. And… never used them.

Our choice was to buy a generator (something we still meant to do in the future for good sense and emergency preparation and all that) or use a power inverter, the latter of which we already had. 750 watts, which did prove enough to be able to run the vest system and the nebulizer with nary a problem. I was somewhat worried as someone in a group recommended at least 1000 watts, but this seemed to do the trick.

Backpacking is out of the question for the time being, but we were pleased with the results. Layne opened the hood, we hooked up everything, and the girls sat in the passenger’s seat, the InCourage system in the driver’s seat, somehow navigating ABC Mouse on the old phone that no longer recognizes its SIM card in a place with no data signal (we suspect the ranger had WiFi).

It wasn’t bad at all, in my opinion. True, Jade’s treatment stuff overshadowed the rest of the stuff, it seemed, but I feel up for going camping again.