An EPIC Camping Trip

July 22nd - August 1st

TEN Nights of Camping!

Leavenworth Thousand Trails

We headed out on Sunday with the plan to come home on Thursday.

Lunch! We like their burgers, but the wait was a bit ridiculous.

Looking for our camp spot.

Zach ended up picking the spot. I think all the dirt drew him in. The bigger, more private area sold us.

The kids didn't waste anytime exploring.

And flying kites.

Roasting hot dogs with Rhodes dough wrapped around it. Yum!

S'mores to end our awesome first day!

This is how we camp.

We start our morning w/a little breakfast and cartoons and of course, Darin has to keep up with the news and such. AND we have a coffee maker. Essential.

Newman's first camping trip. What is occupying him or rather driving him crazy? Squirrels.

Otherwise I think he thoroughly enjoyed himself. He did really good.

What did Darin introduce to Zach? Yep, a sling shot. There were rules.

He did really good and had fun. :-)

Darin decided it was time to bring back his hobby of flying remote control airplanes. The big nice kind. This time he got a glider.

It was fun to watch. The kids enjoyed it for a few minutes, but then they wanted to fly it (which they couldn't) or they wanted him to land it and take off all the time. Currently this is really just something for Darin to enjoy doing. :-)

It went way high in the sky where you could barely see it. He turns off the motor and then it just glides around. It is pretty cool.

Elissa spent as much time with this little girl, Amilie (pronounced Emily), that was staying with her grandparents a couple of camp spots down. I thought it was interesting that they both spell their names differently. 

It is a blessing and a curse to make friends at camp. It is great that they have someone to play with and maybe I can read a book. But then when you want to do family stuff, either Elissa was upset to leave Amilie or we brought Amilie along. The girl hates to be without a friend around. We are working on having balance.

My bright idea was to let Newman run while I rode my bike and was holding his leash. I had done this a couple of times at home successfully, but also scared the whole time. He is a powerful guy. It is a great way to get some energy out of him. He will literally run as fast or faster then you can pedal. When he wants to go fast he digs in like a sled dog and pulls you. He is crazy.

The flaw? He is uncontrollable and he goes where he wants. Especially when he sees a squirrel. Unfortunately for me the squirrel was on the opposite side and he cut me off and I went flying over the handle bars. For real. Bent my bike basket which had my nice camera in it. Camera is ok. I had to lay there a few minutes. The kids saw it happen, but just kind of stood and looked at me. Neither of them ran for Dad. I had to limp home. I ended up having bruises up and down my legs and a little sore, but otherwise ok. That's it for exercising the dog this way.

By Tuesday I knew that I didn't want to go home on Thursday. The weather was perfect. Camping was going well. I needed more time in the sun. :-) We had to be home Thursday for an appointment that we couldn't reschedule, so Darin came up with a plan. We would leave Thursday morning to go home for the day. We would leave the trailer and try to make it a "quick" trip. So that's what we did. We drove home Thursday morning. I did laundry. Went grocery shopping. Packed the truck. Had our appointment. And headed back around 7pm. Totally worth it.

Our days were filled with hiking the trails, bike riding, kite flying, afternoons at the pool, putt putt golf and shuffle board. Then an evening of sitting by the fire, s'mores, showers, movie and bed around 10:30pm. It was exhausting. It was fun.

One morning Zach had to bring Geckie the gecko on our hike.

A yucky lizard!

An even worse lizard.

Elissa found this big rock that she just had to have. So we told her if she carried it down then she could keep it. She carried it half way. It was heavy.

But then she had Darin take her back to it so she could carry it the rest of the way. Perseverance.

Grandma & Papa came over for the last few days we were there. I never thought I would hear them say they were not up for tenting it, but it happened. They were working on every which way not to put up a tent. They ended up sleeping in the back of Darin's truck. :-)

Mom and I stole away for half a day and went into Leavenworth the day before we left. We tried to get the boys to meet us in town for dinner, but Darin didn't want to drag the kids in. We ended up eating every meal in our camper.

10 nights is a day or two too long, we've decided. We had a great time, but by the end I was pretty irritable and so was everyone else. Eight is probably perfect. :-)