Italy Trip Part I: Driving South and Camping

This is going to be a multi-part Blog for our family vacation to Italy, we did so much in just eight short days!! 

We drove south through Switzerland (about a 7-1/2 hour drive from Stuttgart).  It was a cold, rainy day with low hanging clouds hugging the tops of the mountains.  We had to arrive in Camp Darby, Livorno, Italy by 5:00 p.m. to check out our tent from Outdoor Rec, but otherwise we had no plans for the first day.  What we didn't plan on was traffic in Switzerland.  They have timed lights limiting how much traffic can go into the tunnels at a time.  I guess the backup is so common there is this cheesy traffic mannequin to slow you down.  It took about 1-1/2 hours longer than we planned to get through - we kept waiting to see what caused it and never did.  I guess if you exceed the traffic allowed by the timed lights things just back up - what a stupid system!!

We arrived at Camp Darby where we camped out for the first five nights of our trip.  This Army base is about 4 miles from the Mediterranean Coast, perfectly situated for seeing Tuscany and mid-Italy.  When we checked in, they suggested we sleep in the gym the first night since bad weather was expected.  Since this sounded absolutely no fun at all, as the hardy campers we are, we ignored their advice and set up our tents.  We had our backpacking tent with us and checked a larger 4-6 man tent from outdoor rec.  Our tent went up in under 2 minutes and did not move in the wind at all.  Their tent, though, was old and as we set it up some of the nylon straps just came apart.  Because of our delay in Switzerland, Outdoor Rec was closed by this time so we couldn't get another one, but with a little jury rigging, we got it all set up.  The girls stayed in our very solid, reliable hiking tent - only suffering a water casualty the second night when they left a bunch of stuff against the tent walls, resulting in daytime rain coming in until the floor was flooded.  The Coleman tent that we rented though, folded way in during the night, almost collapsing multiple times, but our extra lines, held down by a cement bar and the heavy metal picnic table, saved the day.  It also started pouring hard during the night - fortunately not at the same time as the wind!  Brad and I survived the night, the girls didn't even notice the wind and rain!

It was great to have a base of operations, a place to cook out burgers, dogs, etc., to make morning coffee, cook smores, and to start our daily ventures from.  Other things that happened to us at Camp Darby were - attending a Carnival the first night; seeing the cars with big stereo's; Macie locking the keys in the car while we were doing Laundry (as she put in on facebook, "Locking the keys in the car: Fail.  Locking the keys in the car when the spare set is in another country: Epic Fail."); Brad saving the day by opening the car door with a hanger; great big pinecones falling from the huge Italian Umbrella Pine trees (this is where pine nuts come from - also know as coniferous seeds on one menu) - including one under our tent floor; teaching everyone how to play Hearts; the somewhat nasty bathrooms and showers; me working on a gift baby blanket; and the 200+ teenagers with a church group also camping out and their noisy buses parked right next to us.