We camped, we climbed, we cooked.

We have had some fun weekends with Dave being free, free as the wind, and summer on the rise. Memorial Day we did a cookout with friends (some of which brought a play tent  Riley spoke of it after as her "camping trip") and it was a good pre-camp exercise - bonfire, hotdogs, s'mores, canoeing, hiking/strolling through a wooded park...

Turtles were in a abundance.

 I can't get over how green everything is. Summer I love you! While we were there we got to making plans for an overnight trip to Interstate Park, on the St. Croix River that separates Minnesota and Wisconsin. We made reservations, divied up the meal assignments, and hoped for another weekend as glorious as this one was.

Nope.

 Although the day before was sunny and in the high 80s, the day we had to head out into the wilderness it was a cool 60 degrees and pouring rain. More than once on the drive there I thought of turning back but you can't ditch your friends like that, and anyways, we probably would have drowned in a sea of tears if we failed to camp after telling the kids we were - they have really been looking forward to it this week.

 The rain dampened no ones spirits.

 It did dampen the wood a bit but with a little (a lot) of fanning to the flames, we got the hotdogs for the kids and salmon/veggie foil packets for the rest of us roasted nicely.

 Did I take too many pictures? Yes. On a rainy camping night, your kids first camp night, you document. And really I don't know what else you would expect from me at this point.

That night the temperature dropped to 40 and while the kids were snug in their sleeping bags, Dave and I had brought one blanket between us (we had gotten used to sleeping on top of the covers, it's been so warm). The blanket was big enough only if we turned in tandem. Haha. Good for snuggles though.

You know what our tent is missing? Black out curtains. Riley was up at 6, absolutely thrilled to wake in a tent, still camping. Gleeful! We tried to snuggle her back to sleep. It went as well as you know it did.

Aw, he did it!

Haha nope! No he certainly did not!

 Joe slept till seven but was Riley finally managed to "accidentally-on-purpose" wake everyone with her excited giggles. There are worse ways to wake I guess.

After we warmed our bones by the fire and had a breakfast, maybe another s'more or three, we went for a little walk along the river. I love morning air and sunrises, but this it is a rare situation that finds me out in them with my family.

 Then we struck camp before heading to the part of the park with glacial potholes (we visited this back in spring break, but definitely worth another go!)

 At the visitor center we had lunch, hiked around, watched rock-climbers scale the cliffs and threw a good amount of pebbles into the holes bored ten, fifteen, twenty feet down.

Before we even left the parking lot, this one.

What a fun weekend! I never thought of myself as a camper, despite years of girls camps and also working at a Girl Scout camp the summer before I met Dave. But I might be coming around. I have hiking sandals. I successfully cooked salmon for six people at a camp fire in the rain. And I quite enjoyed it! Definitely helps that my companions are all camp-savvy, and my little ones were over the moon about every little thing. Yay it's raining! Look, worms! Marshmallows on a stick! Flashlights! Truly, they are the best companions in an adventure - everything becomes a really freakin' big deal.

I'm thankful for adventurous friends and this beautiful world. I'm thankful for my comfy mattress though too. G'night!

PS: Tuesdays nights I'm all charged up from soccer, which I don't get home from till 11:30, and so it's prime blogging time. But. I hope Dave is available to uh, be the early riser with the chillins or I'm gonna be hurting.