A Camping We Will Go

After our camping trip this past weekend, we decided March might be the best time to go camping in Texas. It was gorgeous, both the weather and the outdoor scenery. We got some use out of our State Parks pass and went to Garner State Park, which was about an hour and forty minute drive for us. The drive there was full of pretty green fields and flowers, and was almost as enjoyable as the camping was. (The above picture is what we woke up to Saturday morning. It was a pretty, misty morning.)

We also had a memorable close call with a giant bird while driving there. We're not sure what kind of bird it was, but Scott described it as a two foot version of the bird from UP. We had to swerve so we didn't hit it. It was slowly walking across the road and Scott thought it would speed up before we got to it, but when it didn't speed up, I may have screamed a tiny bit, and then Scott put the brakes on pretty quick, and that's when the bird started to speed up which put us right on target to squish it since we had just slowed down (and keep in mind this bird was the size of a small dog). Luckily the bird stopped in the nick of time as we swerved around it. 

That little experience was pretty memorable for Boston. He's still talking about it. Now every time we stop or slow down in the car Boston says, "Bird in the road?" Or something about a bird. On the way to church today Scott almost didn't see a stop sign so he had to stop quickly and Boston said, "Did Daddy bonk a bird?" We got a good laugh out of that because we didn't realize what an impression that bird experience had on him until today. 

Boston was so excited to go camping that he had to eat breakfast Friday morning with his sleeping bag and marshmallows sitting next to him. He carried those marshmallows around and couldn't stop talking about putting them on a stick and sticking them in the fire. 

He was also really excited to watch a movie in the tent before bed. We brought the dvd player for the car ride down there, but when I asked him if he wanted to watch a movie he said, "No I want to go to sleep in the tent and watch Incredibles." So that's what he did later that night with a giant apple to snack on. 

I was excited to make jiffy pop over the fire. Scott had never heard of jiffy pop until this camping trip. My family has tried to cook it over a campfire a handful of times, but we usually burn it. I wanted to see if I could make some without burning it since I had heard that my family had jiffy pop success on the last family camping trip which we missed since we live clear down in Texas now. 

I didn't burn it, but I only got about half of the kernels to pop. (You can tell I had to sit pretty close to the fire and smoke to make that popcorn by my glowing red face.)

Scott's a fan of jiffy pop now! He thought it was really good. We'll have to make it a camping tradition.

Some other things we did on this camping trip were:

Making and eating tin foil dinners, 

Watching Boston collect sticks and rocks to his heart's content, 

Playing a bean bag toss game that we picked up on our car ride down, 

Bike riding both Friday night and Saturday morning,  

(Yes, we bribed Boston with a cup of cookies to go on a bike ride with us.)

And of course, making and eating s'mores.   

Boston thinks the whole fun of making s'mores is to light the marshmallow on fire. He hasn't quite figured out that it's even more fun to actually eat them. I made him a s'more, but he took one bite and got back to his marshmallow burning fun. 

It was an awesomely successful family camping trip! I thought it was fun all sleeping in the same bed even though it was a pretty snug fit on our queen sized air mattress. (It's funny to think I thought that mattress was small when just Scott and I used to share it. Ha ha.) When we woke up the next morning Boston put his hand on my head and said, "You cute Mommy, you cute." It was so sweet. That made sharing my half of the little air mattress and a sore back all worth it! We're excited to go again soon. We need to get at least one or two more camping trips in before the weather hits the triple digits!