Camping Trip

We haven't been camping since Whitney was a little baby, so we decided to go this last weekend.  We went to a small campsite called Dan's Landing and we were one of only two tenters since everyone else there was using RV's.  Here we just got to the site and decided to set up the tent right away.  Whitney liked "helping" by folding and unfolding the tent poles.  She especially liked this long orange one and kept dragging it around.

Our tent is a big eight-man tent.  There are only four of us and two are very small, so we only used about a third of the tent.  Whitney kept calling it her 'little house', which I thought was an appropriate name. 

We were able to rent a rowboat for two hours for only ten bucks.  And the campground managers even had lots of life jackets.  The two jackets on the girls were really colorful and they seemed to fit really well.  Whitney especially liked her jacket and being out in the water.  Rachel wasn't a big fan of having the sun in her face.

I took a short turn rowing, but I wasn't very good.  So poor Will had to do the bulk of the work.  Thanks for rowing us across ClearLake, Will.  The weather was beautiful and it was fun being on the water.  Will and I had a 'mini' waterfight.  But we couldn't do much because one of us was always carrying Rachel and Whitney did not want to get wet at all. 
 

Here is our awesome fire.  If you squint a little, you can see me in the background roasting a hotdog.  It took awhile to get the fire going because we didn't have good kindling, only big logs.  But our nice neighbors lent us an axe.  So we were thankful for their help or we would have been stuck with cold hotdogs.  We even splurged and each got to eat one smore (not totally diet friendly, but very tasty). Whitney just liked eating the Hersheys.

Will took a couple of really great nature shots early Saturday morning.  I love seeing reflections in the water.

Here a bunch of ducks swam by.

Although the place was called Clear Lake, the water wasn't very clear or good to swim in.  But that was okay.  We found a bunch of little fish (Whitney is pointing it out) right next to the shore.  Whitney kept throwing in grass and leaves and twigs for the fish to eat, wasn't that nice of her?

And the taking down of the tent.  We all got a little sunburned and mosquito bitten, but it was a fun camping trip.  Maybe we won't wait two whole years to go on one again.