First Camping Trip

Our very first camping trip was to the bluff area of Minnesota. We stayed at Frontenac State Park mid June. The first night we ate in Lake City, Minnesota at a little family resturant where they were having all you can eat fish. This was recorded as Joshua's all time favorite part of going camping! In addition, Joshua loved seeing record numbers of deer. In his deer tally account he has now counted ten in his life that he has seen thus far.The kids had fun and a kind gentleman offered to take our family's picture then. The boys were goof balls and had a blast walking back to the car goofing around together as only brothers can! The weather was magnificent and the kids loved sleeping in a tent. Eliana especially loved sleeping in the tent and even taking a nap in the tent. Gabriel wrote about his favorite part of camping and it was the fire! The kids loved watching, helping and best of all making smores with the fire. For those friends in Brazil that have no idea what smores are. They are basically a squishy sticky glob of sugar (marshmellow) that you melt over a campfire on a stick or metal prong. Then when they either light on fire (as most do) or are a scrumptious golden brown hue you take two pieces of graham crackers (much like a cookie) with some chocolate and slide it off between the layers of cookie and chocolate. You then have a smore sandwich and the name S'more comes from wanting "some" s' "more" more....smore.

The first night in the camp ground there seemed to be some animal trying to get into the trash recepticals and put up a mighty racket all evening long. I hardly slept, but our dear ones and Nathaniel all got a lovely night of sleep. The next morning the kids arose at 5am to the sounds of the birdies in the trees! Our solar powered children were up and at em! We decided to leave the campsite and go out onto the bluff to enjoy breakfast and not disturb fellow campers with our children's voices of exuberant joy. We discovered at that time that our milk we had frozen the day before had still not thawed and so cereal with milk was not an option. We visited Wabasha then and over the course of the morning travelled to Wisconsin to taste the cheese and visited another bluff where there is a great view of the Mississippi river valley. Overall it was a successful camping experience and the kids woud love if we could do it again.