Brian has been practically begging me to start blogging our life and adventures again. And, I agree, it is nice to have these snippets to look back on. They tell the story of our family and lives more than the posts on instagram. I'm just going to pick up where we are in life right now rather than try and catch up.
This last weekend, Labor Day Weekend we camped with friends. The trickiest part was we hadn't planned ahead (both our family and our friends' were traveling until a week before) and all the campsites we wanted to camp at were completely booked. We did lots of searching, reading reviews, and attempted to find something that would work for our families less than 3 hours from NYC.
We finally found
Tobyhanna State Park (in the Poconos of Pennsylvania) had a few open campsites. With a lake to swim in, trails to hike and bike, and boating we figured it was a good match for us. We almost settled on
Hickory Run State Park in the Poconos, but there were posts about a bear sighting so we thought Tobyhanna might be a better fit.
The ironic part...within a half hour after we arrived at Tobyhanna we spotted a black bear walking behind our campsite in the forest, maybe 50 feet away. One of the rangers drove by shortly afterward and we let her know. While we were talking to her, Robbie yelled, "There's a bear!" and pointed to the campsite right next to ours. (We all thought he was joking.) Quicker than lightning the ranger started running toward the bear, shot a loud airgun (which scared us all), and dashed after him yelling, attempting to scare him. We didn't see the bear again after that (fortunately), but it was quite the eventful beginning to our weekend.
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| Oliver watching the ranger chase the black bear back into the forest. |
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| Playing at the lake. |
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| We had fabulous weather and enjoyed getting sticky, dirty and just being outside together. |
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| S'mores for the win. |
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| Playing. |
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Making nature bracelets.
(Duct tape, sticky side out, wrapped around the wrist. Add nature treasures as desired.) |
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The kids loved scooting and riding bikes around the road near the campsite.
The adults frequently yelled "CAR!" Luckily no one was injured. |
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| We broke out the sparklers our 2nd night. |
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| My favorite photo from the weekend. |
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Simon feel fast asleep soon after we left to drive home.
Isabella read her book to Oliver the rest of the way home.
I love these moments!
Successful weekend indeed!!! |
what fun! sadly, we did not make one camping trip this season, but luckily we did still get quite a bit of nature time. those nature bracelets are adorable! and a black bear, golly, that's a pretty un-nerving welcome. i do remember your blog now and those lovely fall photos :) post more this year?
ReplyDeleteThanks so much for stopping by again. :) And, yes, I'm determined to post more, even if it's mostly photos and fewer words. Plan on some lovely fall photos in the next month; the leaves are just barely starting to turn.
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DeleteLove reading camping adventures. We had a similar experience a couple of weeks ago camping in the Adirondacks...two nights of bear run ins. It was great fodder for the kids first day of school - What did you do over the summer? Sleep in the van due to bears :)
ReplyDeleteWe have camped a fair amount (although I wouldn't consider us "experienced" campers), but this was our first experience with bears! I was just reading your post and your experience with bears was WAY more exciting and terrifying!!! I seriously can't imagine trying to sleep in the car all night long.
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