Camping

A few weeks ago we met our dear friends the Baughers for some outdoor living fun. Since I am a high maintenance camper, we had to wait until it was no longer hotter than hell outside to camp. The Baughers have three wonderful young sons. Their middle child is the self professed "cool one," but any of their boys would make great matches for my girls someday!!

Our adventure led us to Nolin Lake State Park. At first, the dads had settled on a Jellystone campsite near Cave City, KY. After reviewing their selection and realizing it offered wifi, water slides and all kinds of other modern conveniences, I spoke up and said that maybe we should try looking for a place that was a bit more outdoorsy. Really I was worried that I would be too tempted to bring the laptop so I just said maybe we could find some place with at least a creek or something for the kids to play in. George searched and searched and found Nolin Lake. I have to give it two thumbs up. The only bad thing I can think of is that they had these giant street lights there that stayed on all night. But all in all it was a good place. We didn't do primitive camping; we did the kind where you bring your car and park it next to your tent. More on the car later.

This is what Eric had to do to keep me away from the smores.






We drove back to "civilization" on Saturday to go visit Dinosaur World in Cave City. No need to ever go back there but thanks to the Groupon, we checked that off our list.






The Baughers brought enough fishing poles for all of us. There was some fishing but not so much catching.







After changing clothes from the "fishing."



There were some tent shenanigans and some unauthorized mixed-sex wresting. I think the boys were very polite to have taken all the abuse from the girls. I don't think they had ever met girls like these before??!!! I'm just sayin'.


































We did lots of eating and lots of packing and unpacking because that is what you do when you go camping. We went on a hike on our last day. The kids did great. The trail was to a waterfall which had no water in it when we arrived but the kids managed to find some sludge to play in. After our hike, we finished up with a picnic lunch in front of the lake and a family vs. family scavenger hunt that was executed by Olivia.




(Above: Jacob is showing off the decomposing fish head he found down by the lake. Nathan also found some treasures by the shore also.)

Papa V even got in on the camping a little. He helped with the preparing and airing out of the tent the weekend he visited for the Steelers game. Maybe
that's where we got our good luck with the weather conditions.