Camping Adventures ~ part 1

On Friday we left for our very first camping trip ever as a family of 6. We know were a little ambitious to bring a 2 year old with, but, as it turns out, he was pretty much perfect on the trip. We left around 12:30 p.m. on Friday and headed down to Lake Louise State Park. It's on the MN/Iowa boarder. We decided that maybe we'd like a screen tent for camping. We stopped at Cabellas because it was pretty much right there when we decided this. They didn't have anything and, besides, we didn't have any room in our van at all to put in anyway. So Cabellas served as a little rest stop. It's a pretty cool outdoors store. Hannah and I call it boys heaven because I could see the gleam in our boys' eyes, even Hubby! We lost Micah's blankey. He has 2 and wanted to bring them into the store with him. On the way up to the 2nd floor I noticed he only had one, so Hannah and I went back down to search for it. Turns out it was in the parking lot. At least we found it! This was taken down the road from Cabellas.

We continue our trip and finally arrive at the park right at check-in time (4 p.m.) We proceed to our campsite and someone is parking in our spot! We kindly ask the people across from us if that was their car and they looked annoyed but moved it. Then those same people went about their business while watching us set up our site with 4 kids running around. The site was small and not much privacy or anything. Hubby was a bit disappointed since he's used to camping on the gunflint trail where is is much more privacy and the sites are bigger. Well we set the tent up and had to move it since the guy lines were too close to the fire. Try moving a tent completely set up, not staked in, and the wind is beginning to kick up. It was adventuresome, but after 90 minutes or so, we were settled and off to go buy dinner. We decided to keep this camping trip simple for the first night so we went to A & W. This one was cool, it was a drive-in one! We ate outside though since it was so nice out. Off we went back to the site to hang out for the night. We let Micah and Kenan stay up until they wanted to go to bed. Let me back up for just a minute and say that Thursday Hubby sprained his ankle getting out of the car at work. So his ankle was sore and swollen and he hadn't put ice on it yet. We hiked for a bit (Yes hubby hiked sprained ankle and all!) Hubby went on like his ankle never hurt even though it was killing him at times. Anyway, Friday night on our hike, we were careful to stay in the middle of the trail, because there was poison ivy and yellow parsnip all over. We also think there might be other plants that irritate because Micah got a rash on his forearm. We saw fire flies on our walk and the kids had fun watching them and catching them. We didn't have a jar or anything so the kids tried to catch them. Timmy caught most of them. The first time he ever tried to catch one, he smacked his hands together so hard like he was trying to kill them. We explained that he just needs to cup them and he would catch them. He did and thought that was pretty cool. Here we are on our walk.

After our walk, Micah and Kenan were tired out so we tucked them in and they were sound asleep! It was pretty windy and cool that night. Hannah and Timmy went to bed too since they were tired. Hubby and I stayed by the fire and hung out for a little bit. The first time since arriving that we'd had anytime to ourselves. It was nice. The stars were out and it was so beautiful! We decided to head into bed and get some sleep. We heard the wind howling which was so soothing and it rained that night which was nice too! A bonus was our tent didn't leak!! Time to go for now, so I will tell the rest of the story another time. To be continued...