Camping: the Beginning and End

Camping, canoeing, hiking, and fishing. These are all activities that both Tyler and I enjoy. Spending any large amount of time doing any one of these with children, however, is not that enjoyable. This past weekend we ventured up to Lily Bay State Park to camp with my family in celebration of my father's birthday.  Overall the trip was better than I expected in some ways and worse in others. Let me shed some light on the subject...

The presence of my family in a campground as a group was actually not as bad as I thought that it would be. We weren't that loud, and we managed to get along quite nicely. So what was the bad part of the camping trip you may ask? Well, of the four activities listed above I was only able to do the camping part for any real time. 

On Saturday Tyler and I had planned on taking our boys off-roading, and hiking up Big Spencer Mountain. Now I don't know if you have ever hiked Big Spencer, but it is a wonderful hike with a most glorious view of Lobster Lake.  Due to us getting a little bit lost on the back roads, which is fun, we weren't able to make it to the trailhead in time for a hike, which is not fun.  Not only that, but this pregnancy has been very hard on my physically and I could not have made it up that mountain, I know now that our not finding the trail earlier was God's grace. I can now blame the absent hike on the tardiness of our arrival instead of on my painful hips, legs and back. 

As far as canoeing and fishing go we were able to do a little of both on Saturday.  During lunch we stopped at Ragged Lake to eat and fish. All in all I was able to spend about 15 minutes casting into the lake from the shore and getting my line stuck in the little sticks. When we arrived back at the campground we decided to take the canoe out onto Moosehead lake.  I have never actually been on Moosehead in a boat, which is surprising considering that I have been to Greenville and surrounding areas numerous times.  After getting the three boys into the canoe and out onto the lake Andrew was happy long enough for us to go out into the bay, circle an island (if you can call it that), and return. I think that we were actually on the water for about 30 minutes. 

So all in all, I spent 48 hours camping (i.e. no showers, no bed, no privacy), 30 minutes canoeing, 15 minutes fishing, and no time hiking.  It could have been better, but it could have been a lot worse.  The boys seemed to enjoy the different experiences and I think that we got Eli hooked on driving on bumpy roads looking for moose!

Our one and only moose spotting this year: Big Mama! ( I don't know if she was a mama, but she was huge) This picture was taken with a 300 mm lens and I also zoomed in on her in iphoto, so we were a long ways off.

I declare this post my public declaration of the beginning and the end of: camping with a child who doesn't yet walk, camping in a campground when better options exist, and camping while in physical pain. Other than that, bring it on baby!