Friday, November 4, 2016

Camping at Gooseberry Falls

We camped, and you can't NOT blog about that, if you have a blog. I want this recorded in history in as many places as possible, it is that rare of an occurance. Why rare? I mean, I love it. It is always a great family memory-builder/bonding, and oh such a relief to be out in nature, see the stars and sit around a campfire... But... Will the weather cooperate? Who to go with? How will we keep everyone warm? Do we have sufficient clothing for exploring and sleeping plus spares for if/when someone falls in the lake or pees their pants? What food will we pack in and what do we need to take to prepare it? Many considerations.

Of course, it is totally worth it.

We went with the Davis family, and their girls are close in age to Riley and Joe. They played so well together that we were able to just relax much of the time. Plus, we shared meal responsibilities, cutting the work in half.

*Thanks Dave and Selena for letting me pilage your pictures for this post. I'm sure I'll revisit when I'm missing summer/nature/campfires/down time. And also to remind myself that I do like camping, when the next opportunity rolls around :)
Rustic mountain men and thermal underpants. Also muscles.
The "secret trail" in the "magic wood" had a lot of appeal for the little ones.
And evening walk before dinner.

 The Davis' did dinner - brats, foil veggies and fall squash soup. Yum. Then s'mores,
So that night, it was cold. About 37 degrees Farenheit?

There was much cuddling - Dave and I each had one kid in our sleeping bags with us, and the extra, Joe, had about ten blankets piled on top. His description of that night: "toasty!" My description: could have been worse. Definitely could have been better. (next time: hats!) But definitely could have been worse.

But what a glorious morning! I thought of Grandma Smith telling us about camping and frying bacon outside with a campfire... It was still shivery, but we had a lot of fun frying up breakfast - bacon and potatoes and eggs - sipping hot chocolate, and chasing away a brazen little red squirrel who thought he had free reign of the pans! The kids ate and, again, played in the mystical forest next to our camp. They adopted a sizeable rock as a baby and took turns toting it around, "feeding" it, covering it up with "blankets" (pine needles) and basically, why do we ever bother buying toys for our kids? They had the best time with that rock...and it somehow made it home with us, shoved under the front seat.



Cuties! Photo cred to Selena!
Another from Selena's camera

 Henry didn't want to nap in the pack-n-play, but the hitch carrier? Yes, definitely, for like an hour and a half. 

I'm glad Selena thought to get a group picture. Don't we look like a party??
Lake Superior is a short distance from the campground, a good hike for, say, a group of six very small children, and their four handlers. With a very rewarding view.
Pebble beaches make for more difficult angels, we found.
From Lake Superior, the hike continues on to Gooseberrry Falls. We took a slight "scenic" detour. I'm not saying I'm not adventurous, but I never left the trail before I married Dave, is what I'm saying. And now our hikes always end up..."scenic." haha :)





And that's it! That's all I've got! A fun weekend! Then we packed up and headed home. Ahem, DAVE packed up. He spoils me - I'm more than happy to shepherd our flock if someone else will do the packing up. The kids passed out the second we got in the car and didn't wake up till we were almost home. THEN we stopped at Culver's for dinner and everyone was so rested and giggly, we had a very nice time + frozen custard. I like my crew. I'm trying to remember some jokes or something, but I just remember laughing a lot.
I like my crew.