The Neighborhood Goes Camping

OK, so it wasn’t the entire neighborhood, but last week  several families with kids ranging from ages 3 to 11  on our street all went camping together at Tettagouche State Park.  Our neighbor up the hill reserved a group camping site so we could all tent together, and truly, it was one of my favorite experiences of the summer.  I really hope it becomes an annual tradition because it was pure fun to the core.  Dr. Peds, along with another dad, had to work during most of the camping excursion, but he was able to come up with us Sunday night and help me set up our monstrous tent.  (I”m so thankful for all the space in our new tent!)

The camping site was primitive, which means that there were vault toilets, to the delight of Mr. Trouble on Feet who literally checked out the “potty hole” every twenty minutes, and the nearest running water was at the semi-modern campground, which was about a quarter mile away, maybe a little further.  To get to our campsite we carted everything in from the parking lot  across a little bridge and up a very steep little hill.  I was a little nervous about how this would go, with 14 (or was it 15?) kids greatly out numbering a handful of adults, but it ended up working great!  Every family brought bikes for all the kids, and we sent the big kids off to ride over to get water in bladders hosted inside backpacks.  They loved the freedom and responsibility to do this, as well as constantly filling up water bottles.

Despite the fact that this post is going to be very long, you should trust that I’m giving you the abbreviated version!  I have so many images!  The weather was cool and overcast and drizzly most of the time, which made for perfect picture taking opportunities all day, every day.

This was only a teensy part of the large fleet of bikes.  The kids rode and rode and rode their bikes up and down the hill and down the trail to the parking lot, and then all around the trailhead parking lot.

The kids worked on completing a very involved workbook for the junior naturalist program for Minnesota State Parks.  Several of them earned patches.  Mr. SP was super motivated to finish to get the patch.  He diligently worked and worked on his blue book for hours, and was one of the first kids finished.  I have since offered to give him patches for homework completion during the school year.  Who knew that a patch would be so motivating?  There were kids spread out with blue workbooks all over the campsite, helping each other and getting help from grown ups.  The books were a bit too involved for our many kindergartners, but they still worked hard with a lot of help. 

We took a hike down to the base of high falls.  Mr. Trouble on Feet slowly walked the whole way there and back, but hey, the slow and steady tortoise got there, right?

We stayed at the bottom for a long time while the kids scrambled around on the rocks, played on a big tree with roots that  were tangled up and easy to climb.

The boys had a great time playing with sticks and sword fighting until Mr. TOF got hit right next to his eye.  It was a near miss, but he was perfectly fine.  There were also soccer balls and baseballs.  Mr. TOF was entranced with baseballs and baseball mitts.  He loved catching the ball in his mitt with his left hand.  Interestingly enough, it looks very likely that this boy is going to be a lefty.  He was very reluctant to remove the ball from his mitt and throw it with his right hand.  He kept trying and trying to throw it with his left hand that was already in the mitt.  The kids spent hours making up games together:  versions of hide and seek and night at the museum and I’m not sure what else.  The rules for the games changed every five minutes.  They ran and ran up and down the hill, into and out of the woods.  It’s a miracle no one got poison ivy.

There were also lots and lots of card games and board games to play in the tents and under the rain tarp when it was drizzling.

It’s no secret that Mr. Trouble on Feet wholheartedly loves camping.  He embraces every aspect of the experience and because there were so many kids who were willing to play with him, he was having the time of his life.  He kept asking where his owl hat was, the one that appeared at our last camping trip on a fluke when we discovered it in a corner of the car.  Apparently you can’t go camping without the owl hat.  I didn’t think we had it along this time either, but when I unzipped a pocket of my backpack, there it was!  Mr. TOF was so excited to wear it!

This was one very tired little person!  He could hardly stand himself.

On our second day we also hiked down to a beautiful beach for lunch.  We made a peanut butter and jelly assembly line and fed the kids while they were in and out of the water.  We built towers with rocks.  The kids were everywhere.  Eventually it started to rain and a couple of kids injured themselves so we had to head back rather than keep hiking, but it was a lot of fun anyway.  I hadn’t been to this part of Tettagouche before at all.

When all the supplies had been packed back up on the last morning, and we had hauled everything back down to the parking lot, the kids took a ride in one of the carts around the parking lot while we packed up all of our vans and loaded the bikes back up.

On our way home we stopped at the Rustic Inn for lunch and gave the poor waitress a run for her money.  That many grubby kids in a restaurant?  Chaos!  Actually it went fairly well, considering!