Family Camp

Stephanie has two camping books that she loves, and she pretends to camp at school, so Kevin picked this weekend for the first ever family camping trip.  I really enjoy camping, Kevin LOVES camping, so he went all in for this adventure.  He found a park on the lake that offered a hike-in trail with primitive camping sites.  Stephanie is a great walker, and it was a 4.8 mile loop, so we figured that if walking went quickly, we would do the whole loop, and if it didn't, we would hike in and then hike out.  The trails were quite manageable for Stephanie, but there was some hand holding to get over rocks and roots, and in the end, we walked in about 1 mile.

Yes, Kevin DID hike her bee pillow in, and OF COURSE Santa came!

At that point, we found an awesome spot to camp.  It was a little sooner than we planned on stopping, but we went for the super cool site.

In the end, it wasn't a bad idea to stop because Stephanie did not go to sleep very early (the tent was way cool and Mom and Dad in there too was just too exciting to get settled), so she was pretty tired in the morning and only walked about two-thirds of the distance out, choosing to take the Mom transport system the remaining length.  At the camp that night, she was really excited about roasting marshmallows, which she waved near the fire for a whole 6 seconds, took a bite, spit it out and declared "too soft".  But the chocolate and graham crackers were a hit, as was the hot dog dinner.

We all had a nice time.  Since she was tired this morning, I could not get a good sense of whether or not she would want to do it again soon, but I'll ask her sometime next week, and I'm sure by then we will be able to judge her true feeling on camping.  Either way, we are up for more camping and hope she enjoys it as much as we do!

And herein was the sleeping problem-  this is how she looked heading in for bedtime!

But no worse for the wear in the morning... Other than not wanting to walk a full mile back to the car.  Who can blame her?