Our1Chance

Memorial Day 2012 Camping and Another Allergy Mystery Solved

Memorial Day Camping 2013

Our next camping trip was Memorial Day 2013.  We chose to stay in Connecticut so that we can travel quickly and enjoy a short holiday weekend stay. We chose a great little family campground call Ross Hill Campground.  It rained for a couple of the days, but we had fun regardless.   This was one of the ONLY times we stayed at the campground for the whole experience.   We aren’t really the type to sit at a campground and enjoy what it has.  We like to seek out adventuresand explore, but for this trip; it seemed fine.  Check out the gallery for our adventures, then scroll to the bottom for the surprise allery reaction.  On one of the next non rainy days, we decided to make “Shayla Free” marshmallow roasting. So we started a campfire and roasted away. We had a lot of fun enjoying a safe treat over the campfire. The girls retired to bed, and we stayed up and enjoyed the fire a bit longer. Fast forward to the morning, and as we are cooking breakfast outside, we notice Shayla was wheezing again. How could this be? We cooked outside the whole time!

Well, quickly we realized that she needed to head to the hospital again for some kind of treatment because her albuterol inhaler wasn’t sufficient for her; whatever this allergy was it was going to take more than this. Since we were in CT we left the camper where it was and just drove 45 minutes to the hospital with the whole family. I left Jen with Shayla at the hospital, drop Leighton off at Mima & Grandpa’s house and then went back to pick up the camper by myself. I arrived back at the camper a many hours after we left, and then it hit me.  It was the campfire smoke! I know this because the inside of the camper smelled SO strong of campfire even after 15 hours. I think we had the fire too close to the camper, the windows open, etc. and it just filled the camper with enough smoke to bother her and trigger her asthma. Since then our theory has been proven correct by having other incidents at campgrounds since; we knew however what it was and jumped into action ahead of necessity.