Last weekend our family headed up to the lake for one last camping trip of the summer. It almost feels like we’re cheating when we go camping in September, eeking out an extra bit of Summer. The weather around here is gorgeous in September, and since most of the tourists have gone back home, the lake is quiet at this time of year.
When we got in on Friday we set up our campsite. The weather report predicted that there could be rain showers on Saturday morning, so Hubby and I strung up a tarp over our picnic table, just in case. It turned out we didn’t get any rain, but we had a monster windstorm on Saturday night. The tarp didn’t blow away, though, and neither did we.
Saturday morning was cool, so we started out by taking a little hike above our camp.
Here’s my attempt at getting a candid shot of the family hiking. I don’t think the kids know the meaning of the word “candid”.
After our hike, the weather had warmed up a bit, so the kids had fun paddling this raft around. Hubby took E-boy for a ride. Me, I sat in my camp chair on the dock and knitted on a sock.
Do you see that nice rock wall around the fire pit? We built that! By the afternoon on Saturday the wind was starting to blow, so we needed to make a little wind break for our fire. Here’s Hubby building up a fire for me to bake a birthday cake for E., who turned seven on Saturday. The plan was to bake a chocolate-raspberry cake in the cast iron dutch oven. It was a good plan, but next time we’re going to use a different recipe. Luckily, the birthday girl enjoyed her cake.
Here’s the finished cake, complete with pink candles. I didn’t keep track of how many were blown out by the wind before the birthday girl started blowing. Inside the pretty pink box was a new webkinz unicorn, which E. thought was a pretty good gift. This picture makes it look like the unicorn is whispering a secret in E’s ear.
E-boy still has a thing for throwing rocks in the water. I don’t think there are any more rocks near the beach that are throwable by a three and a half year old boy. You can see here how the wind is starting to whip up the water. It kept blowing all night long, and didn’t die down unitl late the following morning. It was a pretty crazy night, lying in the tent wondering if it was going to blow away in the wind. The kids didn’t seem to have trouble sleeping, but Hubby and I didn’t get much rest. Luckily, we’d battened down the hatches and were prepared to wait out the storm.
This last picture is of our dinner on Sunday, beef stew cooked over the campfire. Seriously, this was yummy! I precut most of the veggies at home and brought them in a ziplock. The beef was leftover from the last dinner cooked at home. At camp, all I had to do was put the meat and veggies in the pot, and cut the potatoes. Then I tossed in a packet of seasoning and some water. It only took about half an hour over the fire to cook the carrots and potatoes. I’d brought along a loaf of homemade bread which we sliced, buttered and garlicked, then wrapped in foil to heat over the fire. It made a delicious dinner served at a lake-view picnic table.
that*darn*kat 