Camping at Rockport State Park

I had such a great time camping for my birthday this year! My family has been camping in the same area for years but due to the water in the canyon being a water shed, dogs are not allowed. Now that we have a dog (and wanted to take him with us) I had to find a new campground.  Admittedly, I was nervous about taking Copper with us because I wanted a relaxing trip rather than one spent babysitting a puppy all weekend.

After camping in the mountains in very wooded areas for so long, I wasn't sure about camping in an open area but it turned out to be one of the best camping trips of my life. Copper was amazing! I can't wait to take him again. He loved being outside all the time and other than the water being freezing, he even liked playing in the stream and reservoir. As cheesy as it sounds, it touches my heart to see the unconditional love between my kids and their dog.

The stream that ran though our campground was beautiful and the big empty field behind our campsite was great. We played Frisbee, catch, and fetch with Copper.  I picked up a card game version of Scrabble and it was so fun! We played multiple times sitting around the campfire. Ashleigh and I had a story writing contest. The boys gave us a topic and we had 5 minutes to write a short story. The topic was zombies and half way though our time they threw a wrench in our frantic writing session by saying we had to incorporate a dog into it. It was actually really fun hearing the stories.

I always buy my kids composition notebooks to take camping along with a pencil box filled with markers, crayons pens, and pencils. They write about interesting things they experience, draw pictures of what they see or do crayon rubbings of cool leaves or textures they find. I keep thinking they will outgrow it but every time I ask, they still want them.

Instead of plain old smores, we all picked a couple favorite candybars. Oh think of the possibilities, cookies & cream smores, mint chocolate smores, caramel smores, or chocolate raspberry smores. I put all the candybars in a ziplock bag together (so they are easy to find) and kept them in the cooler so they wouldn't melt prematurely. By the way, if anyone has ideas on how to keep a cooler organized, let me know. I hate digging though the ice to find items only to fight to get it to fit back in when I'm done with it. I do use a small plastic tote for all condiment items, so I can pull them out at once, but other than that, I'm at a loss.

I got incredibly sunburnt. Looking back at the pictures I realized I got burnt just packing up Russell's SUV so I didn't stand a chance against two more days of sun, even with sunscreen. Thank God for aloe vera!

     

I told the kids before we left that we were going camping for my birthday so I wanted them to make it as enjoyable for me as I would for them.  I don't remember any arguing, bickering or "I'm bored" for the entire three days.

Swimming in the reservoir and playing on the water trampoline late in the afternoon was almost magical. The sun reflecting off the water was amazingly beautiful. I was refreshed and the whole weekend was food for my soul.