Labor Day Weekend! (About Five Months Later)

Camping! I have always loved camping. I don't know what it is exactly...maybe sleeping in a tent makes me feel like a kid again. Or maybe it's making smores, or playing games around a campfire. Of course...now that I'm older I can MAYBE understand why some people don't like it...getting dirty, listening to other campers yelling until 2 in the morning...but overall, its worth it for a few days of adventure. That's it! Adventure!

It's amazing what you can do without a kitchen!

Twins in flannel. :0)

Another reason why some don't like camping...

But pretty much EVERYONE loves hot chocolate!

Vacations are always nice for some extra reading time. The following is from "True Spirituality" by Francis Schaeffer.

Aunt Donna. She's so cute!

She and my mom are obsessed with Fresca, as you can see...

Some Five Crowns.

So, our plan was to camp in the Sequoias. Except no one thought to plan ahead and reserve a spot until the week before Labor Day. Not exactly enough time for the last big summer holiday. So we camped on the outskirts. As you can see, no big trees right around us, but there was a nice lake!

Camping is also a good time for Sister Time! :)

And family time in general.

My mom and aunt did most of the cooking, but Jeremy and I handled the pancake morning.

Jeremy's pancake dots.

And my attempt at animal pancakes. Can you guess what they are?

Jeremy's dog, Roxy. Roxy and I have a on again off again relationship. I may or may not have a scar on my finger. Thankfully the Labor Day trip was a peaceful time between us. You know...she's kind of a vain dog, so offering to take her picture helped ease the tension.

We did venture into the Sequioas one of the days we were there. We found these critters hanging out by one of the sharp turns.

While we were out and about we saw a sign for some hot springs. We were ready, we had our bathing suits and all. At Yellowstone once, we went swimming in some hot springs. Nice warm water flowing in the middle of an ice cold river. That's what we were expecting. We drove for a long time, so long that after awhile we thought we had gone the wrong way. Jeremy said he was going to turn around but we kept saying, one more minute. Right as he was about to finally make the turn, we saw the sign. By this time we were really excited until we came upon this.

And realized that what they meant by hot springs, was this...

Lame! And what's more, it wasn't cheap to swim in their special hot springs pool. At least they had ice cream, but even then, they wouldn't let you have a free sample taste of any of their flavors. Oh well. We had better things to do. Like check out the spectacular views.

And walk INSIDE giant trees!

And see more of God's beautiful creation!

Three trees growing together!

Check out those roots on this tree that fell over. Massive!

One of the rangers in the park gave me a sequoia seed. Can you believe that this...

turns into this???

Our God is so AMAZING!

Emily showed us Camp Nelson, where we went on High School staff retreat a month later. The student leadership from High School was there for their retreat a few weeks before. As you can see, the remnants of their stay weren't completely gone.

We got a little hungry. Thankfully there was sustenance in a store at Camp Nelson.

But root beer leads to something else. And when you're camping...sometimes a girl's gotta do what a girl's gotta do...