A Camping Farewell

This past weekend was the Real End of Summer. We did our last planned family camping weekend of the summer. As most of you know, we go camping with Andy's cousin and his family at their land at least the 3 major holiday weekends of the summer. Friends join us all and we always have a lot of fun. Remember how I tried to take pictures over Fourth of July, but my camera broke? Well, this time I made up for it and took lots of pictures. So have a cup of tea or coffee or whatever it is you want, sit back and take a journey to Northern Wisconsin with me...


We spend lots of time sitting around the campfire telling stories, jokes, reading our books and, of course, eating. We all eat so much when we camp that it's ridiculous. We often comment that it's a good thing we don't camp every weekend. We'd be huge. Brownies, bars, rich salads, pickle wraps, candy, licorice...Here's a picture of Alayna enjoying some sunflower seeds.





Since we're camping in the woods in the middle of nowhere, we often encounter wildlife. We'll see deer and other less harmful animals, but we'll see plenty of evidence of other animals. Like the big muddy bear paw-print on the cabin window one weekend when we arrived. Here's Alayna's own filthy paw, holding a frequent prize of the kids over the days.




And camping isn't all fun and games. It can be VERY exhausting for young and old. Naps are a must for most of us.


Then, of course, there are the lawn mowers. We have been attempting to come up with another name for them, as they obviously aren't used for mowing any more. They don't even have mower decks on them. Safety first. These rides are pimped and primped and jacked and all sorts of stuff. The tires are grooved for better traction, the pulleys are changed for faster rides. Some have nice paint jobs, others are held together by duct tape. But they all used to be honest-to-goodness riding lawn mowers. Redneck? Maybe. Fun? Oh yeah.

That's my baby, right above here. She's never broken down and runs like a charm. I put her into 3rd gear for the first time ever this weekend when we rode to the dirt road. It was smooth and freshly grated, so I let her rip. I know, 3rd gear isn't much, right? Well, it only has 3 gears and in 3rd it goes about 20 mph. On a lawn mower. I told you we don't mess around.

Sunday afternoon we did a "group ride." See, we usually don't take the mowers out until the kids are all tucked in bed and dreaming of sugar plums and whatever else. Then the adults sit by the fire, talk, have some snacks and maybe a few drinks, all the while making sure no one is going to come out and that everyone is fully asleep. Then we ride. We take the mowers on trails around camp (yes, an adult is usually back at the campsite and someone goes back every few minutes to make sure all is still quiet) Well, this weekend we decided to do a group ride with everyone during the day. The guys had every mower running (we have spares, because breakdowns are inevitable) so all the adults and kids had their own. It was hysterical. That's the chaos below. Alayna is the silver blur flying by...

After everyone got situated and familiar with their mowers, we went on the trails. The kids had a blast being able to go on the rides just like us! Lilly, of course, rode with Daddy while Mikayla rode with me. Then we switched halfway through.

Can I just say how much I am enjoying my new camera? It has an image stabilization feature to prevent the picture from blurring due to slight hand movement. Well, apparently it also works for bumping along a lot more than slightly. I was all over the place on the shots above, and the pics are as clear as can be. Besides the dust. It's great. I took all of the trail shots above while moving. Some were shot in front of me, while others I just pointed the camera behind my head and clicked. With my old camera, they all would have been pure blur.

We finished off the weekend with a big group shot. There are 18 of us in the picture. (Gotta love the self-timer feature!) The funny part is that we did this picture on Sunday afternoon...after 7 people had already left. There would have been 4 more adults and 3 more children in that picture had we thought to do it sooner. Oh well. It was a lot of fun. Until next year!