My little boys live for camping. When we were planning our summer back in February- we planned a little camping trip for the end of July. Back in February I didn't know how busy my summer would feel so it sounded like a good idea. Let me tell you- it was a great idea. It was really fun. But as I was packing and trying to get things done. I felt too busy!
When you go camping as part of a long trip like last year in the Redwoods- you can only take the basics- tent and sleeping bags. But when you are going close to home and only focusing on camping- you take way too much stuff. Here is a picture of that way too much stuff falling down onto Chase in that back seat.You can't even see him back there.
We went to Trial lake. I went to Trial Lake when I was 8 and I have the BEST memories of camping with my family.
Look at how gorgeous our campsite was with the lake right there.
Because we were just focusing on camping, we did not focus on site-seeing (like at the Redwoods or Yellowstone or along the Oregon coast). We did all of the normal camping stuff like cook real camping food. The first night we had tin foil dinners. (ham, kielbasa, potatoes, carrots, pineapple with butter and brown sugar)
Then we went down to the lake. It felt like it was our own personal lake because we were right there next to it and no one really came over to "our" area.
The kids spent the first night taking all the logs, dead trees and sticks and throwing them into the lake. They named the tree above- "big Bertha"
Then we got the fishing gear out. Andre and I are not fishermen. But our kids have always wanted to fish. My dad took Jaxon and Tanner when they were 10 and 8. But then it got to hard for him. Then last year he gave us his fishing gear.
Tanner got his fishing merit badge at the beginning of the month and was able to tie all the knots, teach the little boys how to cast and basically be the fisherman king.
The boys all loved it and they would just go down to the lake and fish happily away for hours.
And... Alex caught a fish! He brought it up to show me and then he let it go. Before we left, we watched a you tube video on how to gut a fish... but I don't think any of us were up to actually doing it.
whittling...
Jaxon did a lot of reading...
Game playing (Phase Ten was really really long)...
more whittling
Tanner had taken wood carving at camp so he was making some really fun things.
We also went exploring at other lakes near Trial lake.
This was Moosehead lake (or something)
This was Mirror Lake. Trying to get the fishies to come nibble their feet.
More crafts
We did a lot of dutch oven cooking. This is Chase helping.
Chase loves to hit things. This is his "pick axe" and a log.
View from the lake up to our camp.
Chase made a whip out of orange duct tape
Seriously that Phase Ten game was still going
I took glow sticks and we had so much fun with those.
I didn't really have a plan with them. But we came up with fun games. We made rings and then tried to throw them onto differet things around the campsite.
And... We had our boat. Our poor boat had a leak so we could only use it for about 30 minutes at a time. But they had so much fun each time we used it.
They started using a log as a boat and they found a raft on the side of the lake that someone had left. So they were all just floating around- having so much fun. This might have been one of the most fun things we did the whole trip.
We hiked around the lake. There really wasn't a real trail around it so we had to make our own.
It was beautiful.
This was the first time we took our other tents and didn't all sleep in our big family tent. It was so much nicer to spread out.
We played Frisbee golf and that was really fun. they had to go to targets that were really far away.
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