Wonderworks
NC rest area
Florence Hotel
Pigeon Forge Hotel
Happy Connecting. Sent from my Sprint Samsung Galaxy S® 5
Friday, July 3, 2015
Sunday, June 21, 2015
Spring Mill Day #3
June 17th was day #3 and I am not sure how I feel about calling it an actual day. We had planned on swimming, caving, and going to the Gus Grissom Memorial exhibit that day. Swimming I knew was probably not going to happen because we had already decided to throw all of our wet things into a big pile and just let them be wet. Who wants to put on a stinky wet suit? We had the day before and I didn't care to for 2 days ina row. So swimming was over.
At 4am, I woke to the sound of rain. Great another night in a wet tent. I sat for about 30-45 minutes desperately trying to get a signal for my phone. Finally, I found the radar and my was it colorful. I also found the Minutecast which said it was going to rain for the next 120 minutes. Once again, great. Good thing was that we had already decided to nix the thought of cooking in the morning. We were going to find a nice restaurant somewhere in town for breakfast. Nice, meaning, dry with hot food.
Those plans were changing by the minute. It was about 5:30am now and I was looking outside the tent and just happened to catch a reflection near Mom's tent. A reflection isn't good. That means water. I sent her a text to tell her that I thought she probably had water in her tent. Then I got busy getting dressed since I knew we would need to get out of the tents. I also started packing as much as I could.
She texted back and said yes her tent was wet! We got the kids up and put them into the car. We were soaking wet and cold by this time. Thankfully our raincoats and ponchos helped with some of the wet.
By the time I loaded most of the stuff in my tent into the car and helped Mom with her stuff, it was close to 6am. I had looked up McDonald's on the GPS and knew one was close. So our dry restaurant became a fast food favorite, McDonald's. That's ok though. We were dry and we had hot food. We stayed there until after 7am. Then we drove back to the park to get the tents.
We packed them up as best we could. Everything was so wet. We then went out of the campgrounds, waving to our neighbors as we left. Justin talked to everyone in the neighboring campsites while we were camping, so we had made some friends. They were also leaving the campsites.
Lucky for us that the Gus Grissom Memorial opened at 8am. We went over there and toured the small but touching tribute to Grissom, a national hero.
After that we were on our way home and it wasn't even 10am. We thought about going back and asking about the caves but decided that we should plan on that another day. We were tired and done with the outdoors for that trip. We were home just before noon. Not really a full day but it seemed pretty full!
I had a fun time camping with Mom and the kids! Next time it will hopefully be dry.
Happy Connecting. Sent from my Sprint Samsung Galaxy S® 5
Friday, June 19, 2015
Spring Mill State Park #2
June 16, 2015
I woke up about 2am in my tent to the sound of rain and thunder...great...wet tent. But actually it didn't take on any water which was great. The worst part was not being able to sleep because of little boys rolling around on the air mattress which proved to be a dumb idea. I let all the air out when we got up.
Around 8am, the boys finally awoke and I got out of the tent. It was much cooler after the rain came through snd thankfully was bright and sunny. However, everything on the clothesline was soaked.
Mom told me the rain was going to start again at 9:30am...wonderful. No one likes camping in the rain!
We got a fire going with our charcoal and made eggs and toast in the pie irons. This was my first experience using a pie iron and while I had high hopes to use them two more times, Mother Nature had other ideas. Breakfast was a success. The eggs cooked slowly in the pie irons but they cooked and we ate. We got cleaned up and moved everything to the middle of the tents just in case it did rain again. We headed to the Pioneer Village.
The Pioneer Village was great to walk through. I would have loved to spend a few more minutes looking at the exhibits but the kids enjoyed running from house to house. So reading was sort of out of the question. The park has an old grist mill that runs every hour for a couple of minutes. We happened to be at the mill when thr water wheel started turning and you would have thought my kids hit the lottery. They were so excited about the water wheel. I was happy we finally found something they were excited about. We managed to go through the village and make it back in time to see the mill run again. They loved it.
We headed to a playground/shelter area for lunch and managed to eat and play a little before it started to rain again. Our outside adventures were over for the moment. So we checked out the Nature Center. This was a great distraction for the kids. They had several interactive games and exhibits the kids could take part in. Plus we were inside not getting poured on. They were funny though. They kept complaining about wanting to go back to the campsite. We kept reminding them there isn't much to do at a wet campsite. Luckily after about an hour the rain stopped so we zipped back to camp for swimsuits and went to the pool.
Dinner was pizza in a mess kit. This was actually pretty good and once the biscuits actually cooked, (the crust) we were able to top the, cook some more and eat them. All over the fire. I was proud of our outdoor cooking skills for the trip! 3 meals and a dessert all over the fire.
It was getting close to "lights out," but knowing that the weather was iffy, we packed as much into the truck as we could. Everything but the tents, tarp, and stuff inside of it. Good thinking. It poured again that night.
Happy Connecting. Sent from my Sprint Samsung Galaxy S® 5
Thursday, June 18, 2015
Spring Mill State Park 2015 #1
It has been several months since I have blogged. I have been inspired by my cousin Clint's blog from Singapore so I am going to attempt some more writing.
Today is probably not the best day to blog as I am exhausted from our camping trip to Spring Mill State Park, but it is fresh in my mind, so I will try.
Monday we left Indy, just the kids, me and Mom. We drove about 2 hours south of Indianapolis to the park. We got checked into the campground and started pitching tents and checking out the camp site. It was right next to the bathroom which really was pretty perfect. Especially with 3 kids.
We enjoyed the pool that afternoon. The older kids loved the rock wall and the diving board. Justin enjoyed getting to know everyone at the pool. After dinner we ate some yummy chicken, rice, and hot dogs. The kids were appalled they has to do the dishes after dinner. But we made sure they knew that after dinner everyone helps!
After dinner we ate Smore's, played ladder golf, and headed to bed.
Short and sweet...more to come. There were plenty of good and not so good moments especially from the children...I should write them down when they happen. Otherwise I block them out.
Happy Connecting. Sent from my Sprint Samsung Galaxy S® 5
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