I think it’s been almost two years since we went camping. Which is sad, because our family loves to camp. And no – no camper or RV here. We do tent-style. Our air mattress is a must, so it counts and roughing it to some and not to others. We also prefer real bathrooms somewhere nearby. Two days or less – no showers for us. More than that, showers preferred.
We lead a great Life Group through our church, and one of our members suggested the camping trip a few months back. We have 5 families represented in the group right now, and 4 of the 5 were able to go. (The other was in Hawaii, so, while we missed them, we didn’t feel SO bad for them!) It was so fun to have such great participation.
We drove up to Beaver’s Bend State Park north of Broken Bow, OK on Friday afternoon and got our tents set up around 7pm. The Spencers had arrived earlier and secured a great location right on the river with lots of trees. We did a simple hot dog dinner and went to bed sweaty and tired after all that setup.
I’m not sure any of us slept well on Friday night. Just takes some getting used to to sleep under the stars, I guess. There was also an annoying bird that contributed. We had a super early start, a yummy breakfast thanks to the Callahans, and got ready to go horseback riding. There was a little place to do it just around the corner from our camp site. They determined Ellie was too big to ride with me or James, so she had to have her own horse. I was nervous she’d get on the horse and get scared and not want to ride. No reason for nerves! She LOVED it! Emma sat behind me, and she loved it as well.
After the horses, the Spencers provided our yummy lunch, and we rested for a bit before getting ready to go swim in the river. It was around 90 degrees on Saturday, so we were all looking forward to getting cooled off. Little did we know just how cool it would be! The water was FREEZING. Most of us worked our way in (and James forced Dax in), but it was crazy cold. It was still nice to get cooled off, though.
We went back to the campground and had a nice relaxing evening. James made the Wiebe dinner of BBQ chicken, corn and beans. And of course S’mores were made. We got the kids to bed and had a much more relaxing evening by the campfire.
We did sleep much better on night two, I think. The kids all did SO great. They played by the river for hours and came back up super muddy. No one had any major bug issues (except for a few ticks), so I was really proud of all of them. On Sunday morning, the Aleman’s made a great breakfast, and we all started packing up to head home! Here’s the whole group:
Clearly we wore out our kids:
Can’t wait to go again in the fall!
