Setting Up

Part of the 'fun' of each team trip is setting everything up. This particular team decided to stay in two separate locations since a few of the most adventurous of them wanted to sleep at the farm. The others chose to stay in a hotel in Bani. Trust me when I tell you that the word hotel should be used lightly. We wouldn't want you to have a picture of a Hilton, or a Holiday Inn. Not even a Day's Inn or a Motel 6. Keep moving down the economic chain until you arrive at, "it's more or less clean; that will do". I tell you that so you won't think they were resting in luxury while the rest of us were housed either in a tent or in the bunk beds of the one room currently available at Restoration Ranch. Danny and I chose to stay at the farm in a tent so that I would be able to start breakfast before the team arrived each morning. Last year Dick and Ginny Rodermond left some inflatable mattresses here. This year some tents came along with the team. (Thank you Edgar.) So Danny set up a tent, and then the guys inflated the mattresses so we'd have something to sleep on, not just in. As things sometimes go, the batteries to operate the pump had been left at home so we resorted to another means of airing up those mattresses.


It was low-tech but it worked! Thanks guys. I slept quite comfortably. It was actually really cool to be able to see the stars and sky at night after we went to bed. The tents had a wonderful removable cover for the top that allowed you to be all snug as a bug or just screened in. It was so cold out there at night that after one night of enjoying the beauty of the sky, we had to leave the top cover on. And Bonnie, our Yorkie, absolutely loved sleeping in the tent with the two of us. Her crate wouldn't fit in there with the two inflatable mattresses so she got to sleep with 'mama'. She liked that, and truth be told, I needed her little bit of body warmth!