In preparation of our 3 week road trip through Spain & Portugal in September & October, we have decided to use every opportunity we can to make sure our camping procedures are down pat and we will have absolutely everything we need for the trip. And of course a major component of that is making sure Ayla is comfortable in the tent and doesn’t get any crazy ideas like trying to eat it.

We set out Saturday morning with no particular destination in mind. We just threw our camping stuff in the car and figured we’d drive until we got to an area we liked, trying to stay off the highway and hopefully seeing some nice scenery along the way. What we learned was it’s much harder to get anywhere on small road than we had imagined…and perhaps our navigation skills aren’t so great. We drove in a few circles and some would say we got a bit lost…but when you have no particular destination to get to anyway, I guess you can never be lost.

The Defender doesn’t have air conditioning and after we’d driven most of the morning, Ayla started trying to climb over the center console to sit near me. Then she just dipped her head and sort of seemed to pass out. Naturally both of us kind of started to freak out and Stefan started looking for a place where we could take a quick break. When I lifted her front paws to set her fully in the back seat again, she was just limp and didn’t really show any response. But as soon as we stopped, she was back to her self and seemed as if nothing had happened…and as I type this I’m thinking I will be doing some further research on sun stroke…and if we can fit a Cool Bed II into the truck for the trip to help regulate her temperature.

At this point, we had gone through Montabauer and were now in Koblenz…so since we reached the Mosel river and the puppy didn’t seem prepared for more car travel, we decided this would be a good enough place to stop. We pulled out our laptop with our camping sites software and located a place on an island in the river which we figured would be decent to try out. We weren’t figuring it would be the best of the best but at least some place to relax a bit and let Ayla return to normal.

When we arrived at the site, we started to think our impromptu camping plans were a bit too loosely thought out. Normally when we go somewhere, we bring our gas camping cooker and a grill and make a nice dinner and breakfast for ourselves. But this time around, we were concentrating more on the dog’s needs and just assumed we would end up somewhere which had a restaurant nearby or at least a small store where we could pick some things up. Since we hadn’t really had time to check things out with puppers giving us a scare, we became even more unprepared…but at least learned a good lesson from the whole experience.

We set up a dog run for Ayla with a rope. We strung the rope from a tree to a screw in stake and then attached her leash to it so she had a decent amount of space to move around and plenty of shade to lay in. Setting up our new tent for the first time went pretty smoothly. Probably about 20 minutes of set up resulted in us finally being able to really “ooh” and “aah” over its construction and all the ingenious features it has. We spent quite a lot of time looking for the “perfect” tent and we think we definitely found it from LL Bean. There is a front room on the tent where Ayla will be able to hang out but still be protected from bugs when the flaps are down…and since it stays relatively open aside from those flaps, she should still be able to get decent air flow through there so she stays cooler. The other part of the tent is more than big enough for our air mattress, bags, and just about anything else we want to put in there…including Ayla even when she’s full grown. Of course if she still insists on sleeping on the air mattress with us we’re clearly going to need a much larger one soon. This part has exits into the “dog” room and to the outside which makes it quite practical if she’s sleeping and we need to exit the tent.

After sitting on our pitch and smelling the neighbors start to grill, we decided we’d have to venture out and find a grocery store which we hoped would have everything we’d need to make the evening better. Backtracking back up the river, we came to a small town which had a little grocery store and pulled in there. We managed to get some pre-marinated pork steaks, a loaf of bread and some herb butter to put on it, watermelon, iced tea and some chips in case we got hungry later. We also had to buy paper plates, forks and knives, grill tongs and a disposable chemical grill to complete dinner. Anyone who has gone camping with us before knows that we usually don’t take this process lightly and we like to have all the comforts of home with us when we go. So the fact that we ended up taking virtually nothing with us this time really helped us to realize that we never want to make that mistake again.

As we started the grill and prepared everything for dinner, a man around 60 wandered by with his bike and wanted to talk to Ayla. The guy seemed to have had his dinner in a liquid format and the Speedo he was wearing was struggling to stay around him. Almost losing my appetite and trying not to make faces at hubbers, I found myself just wishing he would finally get out of there. But as he started to leave, he talked about his black Germany Shepard, Rocko, and said he’d bring him by in a few minutes to meet Ayla. With nowhere to run in that situation, we could only hope he would forget the conversation by the time he got back to his camper…but he didn’t and when he brought the dog back, he had 3 more people with him. Of course Ayla loved the attention but Rocko was more interested in playing with her toys than Ayla herself. So she had to settle for lots of loving from the humans instead which seemed to please her just fine.

While we stood there talking to them, another guy wandered up with his 3-week old baby who they’d just brought home from the hospital…and then another 2 woman stopped to chat with 2 little girls. Our quiet little pitch had quickly turned into a party area and since we didn’t know any of these people, we went back to prepping our dinner while everyone chatted away. Thankfully the crowd dispersed before dinner was ready and we were able to eat in silence…but not before Ayla knocked over a glass of iced tea…which she promptly assisted in cleaning up since it obviously tasted

very good to her too.

The evening continued to progress nicely and we were really enjoying our time in the almost wilderness. But apparently we had also not used our best judgment when we chose our spot either. We really sort of stumbled across it because while we were driving around, some people hollered at us to stop. Turns out the men wanted to check out the Defender and even asked if they could drive it around the campsite a bit…which they never actually approached us to do but we would have let them. So as we sat there talking to them, I noticed a big tree on a lot behind them and since we hadn’t seen any other free spots with shade, we decided that this would be the best place. Sure it was beside the playground but how many kids could there be around here? And surely they could go to bed when it got dark if not sooner…

Par to our course, they did not go to bed when it got dark at 10:30. In fact, two groups of young teens decided right there by the swings would be the ultimate place to pitch their tents for the night…and then scream, laugh, giggle, attempt to rap and otherwise carry on until about 2 am. Sure it was entertaining to watch the girls try to figure out how to put up the tent…and quickly abandon that idea. Then watching 3 boys come over to set it up for them while the girls weren’t even around really got us smiling. Áyla on the other hand seemed to find it a bit disconcerting and perhaps even annoying.

Once it got dark and we were ready to go to bed, we decided it was best to try having Ayla in the tent with us versus letting her sleep outside. You never know what kind of nutso people wander around in these places at night and with the kids sleeping about 30 feet away, it just seemed much safer. We knew there was a risk that she’s try chewing on the tent, our clothes, our heads or anything else she could find in there but thankfully she settled down rather quickly and napped for about 30 minutes. Then, the kids started to get louder and Ayla decided it was time to go into protector mode. She got on the air mattress with us and nestled herself between the two of us. She started out towards the bottom but apparently that wasn’t close enough so she moved between our heads and laid there. She used her big girl bark to inform everyone that they better behave or she’d have to take matters into her own mouth…and then backed up her threats with some growling. It was really quite something to see her become so protective…especially since we’ve heard that Newfs aren’t always that way. But we certainly viewed it as a pleasant discovery since we want people to be at least a little intimidated by her rather than thinking she’s just a big ball of fluff…the less people we have harassing us, the better.

The rest of the trip was pretty uneventful. We were only awaked once in the middle of the night from the kids and Ayla let them know it was time to settle down. She was great again on the car ride home and we didn’t have any more scary experiences where we thought we might lose her over the rainbow bridge. We’re really looking forward to our next experience now and hope that she is too…so hopefully one of the next few weekends, we’ll have a whole new adventure to report.