family camping

Oh what fun we had on the family camp. It was busy, crazy, loud, quiet, peaceful, and nerve-wrecking all at once. Saturday night and Sunday was Bridgman solo camp- setting up, exploring a bit, hiking a little, knitting, reading, finding out that those candles I brought solely for atmosphere would actually be needed since our lantern failed to charge itself before we left town (ahem). When I camp, my goal is to live well- we always have steaks on the first night, a bottle of nice wine, something dessert-y (this time it was vanilla-soaked grilled peaches and pears over my mother's pound cake). We had baba ganoogh, a caprese salad with grape tomatoes and pearl-sized balls of fresh mozzarella, grilled corn, - YUM.

Pancake breakfast, hiking, river-exploring, more quiet reading/knitting/playing/napping time filled the day until we ran out of mosquito spray (and, ah, ice cream)and made a run to the old-fashioned general store near the campsite. That evening joined by some dear friends and their two girls. This was their first family-camping experience, so we were invested in making sure it was a good one. There was lots of mayhem in tent set-up, exploring our little site, dogs getting adjusted to each other, and mud-pie making in the "sink" around the water spigot. We had fabulous chicken and pepper fajitas with "rock-and-mole", smores, and crying exhausted kids. Monday started off with percolator coffee and "raft potatoes" which I should have taken a picture of (pan-fried potatoes and onions, scramble in some eggs and cheddar, even better with diced bacon).
We were off to the river by 9. We spent all day exploring the sand bars of the Mississippi River, finding beautiful opalescent muscle shells, rocks, driftwood, and swimming in the little pools that formed between the sand bars. Dogs swam, kids swam, mamas swam, daddies stayed in their chairs bonding over movies and rock-n-roll. The best part of all this? It all happened 20 minutes from my front door. Beautiful towering oaks and cottonwoods, temperatures hovering in the low 80s, absolutely no cell phone reception, so close to home. It was a perfect holiday weekend.