Frog Music

Yeah for camping! I love it. On the plus side it is wonderful for family togetherness (Devin was able to come this time! Double yeah!), it gets us out of the house and into the great outdoors, and we get to explore and try new things!

My friend Isabel told me about this great campsite that she went to last year and I wanted to try it out. It was in North Carolina, but just barely on the edge. Devin made the joke with everyone that we couldn't find any close campsites within four hours so we had to pick this one. I agree, the drive was not the fun part, but when we got there it was awesome. 

The campsite is called Merchants Millpond State Park. They have family campsites, and primitive canoe in campsites and backpacking campsites. We chose the canoe in option. It was so cool! We were on a swamp. The scenery was all so awesome: the trees, lily pads, the wildlife! My kids couldn't get enough of all the animals we were seeing! Blue herons, turtles, green tree frogs, toads, black rat snakes, geese, crocodiles! There were also lots of bugs, dragon flies, butterflies, and ticks! The ticks were definitely the worst part of the trip. It must be a bad year. It seemed we were flicking them off ourselves constantly. I pulled (sometimes the kids helped pull) out six ticks out of my skin. Gross. They itch like crazy. And I came home absolutely covered in mosquito bites, so much that the first night home I slept terribly because I kept waking up scratching. Ironically I was the only one in the group who got bit. No one else could find even one mosquito bite on them.

Besides the bugs it was awesome. Except at night the frogs also became very annoying. Now we know how noisy a swamp can be. As soon as the sun went down, it seemed to happen all at once, the swamp came alive in a terrible swamp orchestra. Not the most soothing music for sleeping. Bruce was scared too.

So the bugs and the creepy night music were the worst parts. Now that we have that behind us, we can talk about the good things! Canoeing was so fun! Bridger gave the paddle a try and figured it out pretty well! We saw these Florida Cooters (turtles) everywhere, They'd be sitting on logs in the water, usually when we'd approach them in our canoe they'd all dive off into the water, but sometimes we'd get close enough for Bridger to try catching them. Probably not allowed, he never did get one though.

Canoeing in our gear.

Bridger and I were canoeing along when all of a sudden this green frog surprised me by jumping right onto my knee! Bridger soon caught it and then we, of course, had to take it back in to our campsite to show everyone what a cool frog jumped on us. Then we took it back out so Bridger could place it back on the lily pad, where he thought it belonged.

Box Turtle

 In the picture above Bridger is holding an avocado. Okay, he only thought it was an avocado so as we were hiking along he kicked the 'avocado' off the trail. Then he realized it was a turtle! I think it was a Common Musk Turtle.

Boys are brave when it comes to snakes. It is part of their boyhood. Devin has been teaching Bridger how to use a stick to pin its head down and then he tries to grab its tail. Luckily, he's still a bit squirm-ish when it actually come to picking it up. But the boys bravery did come in useful at the end of our camping trip. We were all extra stinky so I wanted to shower before we left. Our campground was a primitive site, but after we packed up we drove over to the family campground. Myra and I were going to shower first. Myra held the door open to the shower she wanted after looking them all over. Hiding on the shower seat was a huge snake! She hadn't even noticed it. So we did the obvious thing... We ran to ask the boys for help. Devin and Bridger used a stick to guide it out the open bathroom door. That was a snake they were not going to touch. I'm not sure what kind it was, but I know it was not the harmless rat snake. Whew! Thank goodness for the boys and their bravery. I don't know what would have happened had we not known about the snake until we were showering.

 Bruce decided he wanted to go for a swim. First off, this was impressive because when we tried to get him to swim in our neighborhood pool last year at the dog swim, he would have nothing of it. I guess he likes to swim in smelly pond water best. But once he jumped in, the next thing was to try to get him back in the boat without tipping. And to calm the kids down who were hysterically screaming at Bruce to "get back here!" because they all thought he was going to be eaten by a crocodile. I did pull him safely back into my canoe without tipping over before he got eaten by a crocodile. And he thanked us for saving his life by shaking the smelly water all over us and then trying to jump in again.

I laugh when I see this picture. Notice the fly.

A decent hand washing option when there is no running water.

Tired kids.

We camped the weekend of the Family Fun event, purposely so we could be there for the 5K, see the cool displays, pet a live baby alligator, get faces pained, play in the bounce house, and eat snow cones. What a fun weekend!

To prevent anyone from taking off in our canoes we hiked back in. It was almost as cool as canoeing. We hiked over some bridges and followed back along the swamp to the visitors center.

Family 5K! This was definitely my kind of trip. I got the kids pumped up and excited to run. Being a stroller friendly race I let Myra and Sawyer run until they got tired, then they'd hop back into the stroller and when they were rested they'd hop out and run again. Bridger was an excellent runner! Devin stayed with him and Bruce pulled Bridger along, he said it was a big help when he got tired. We all got matching purple shirts. We should have taken family pictures right there!

Let's do it again! Maybe next year we'll try it on the weekend of the local rodeo. :)