The Joy of Camping

I LOVE camping. Joel laughs at me...and says he has no idea why I would love camping since I hate the dirt, don't like the beach etc. etc., but I love camping. I know that this is partially due to nostalgia. My favourite memories as a child involved camping. It was the time when I really got to hang out with my family, and I loved that. I vividly recall canoeing, jumping off rocks at Algonquin, climbing over beaver dams, standing on the highway in the middle of the night listening for wolves, sitting around the campfire with the family and yes, even the terrifying thunderstorms I lived through during camping trips.

Now I love camping because once again, it brings the family together. There's something about not having the computer, or television, or phone to distract us from each other. MacGregor point is still our beloved favourite for camping. The trails are incredible. The nature centre is fun to explore, the playground is great, the sites are huge and private, the beach is great (although it was pretty scummy this year). It's just awesome. We always do the "park once" challenge which means you park your vehicle once inside the park and then bike everywhere you need to go within the park. We bike to the store, to the nature centre, to the beach, on trails doing treasure hunts. We bike all over. It's awesome exercise and the kids love it (didn't complain once about biking this year...except when we got caught in the storm-more on that later).

In July we spent a total of 10 days at MacGregor on two separate trips. I would love to make it back there for one more trip this year, but we'll have to see. It was sad to say goodbye last week. I never seem to want our trips to end and to return to the old grind (more like the old treadmill...running everywhere and never seeming to get anywhere).

Here's my sweetie and I sharing a sunset at the beach. I didn't post the one where he was sticking his tongue out.

Here's Lyric helping to build "kid island" as the kids called it. I love to see how they creatively find things to play when out in the wild. It thrills me to see them making up games without any toys at all!

Here's a picture of Joel, Lyric, Reese and Morgan from the first weekend in July when we camped with some friends from church. It was a great time to hang out with people and really be able to visit with each other. It's so seldom that we have time to visit with friends without the kids around, but we managed to share a few campfires together as couples and had a blast (thanks Ramers!!). Even though we did have a coon snatch our Tostitos and take off into the woods with them! Couldn't believe the nerve of those things.

More on our trip from last week in my next post. I'm too tired.

Mel