Camping!

When's the last time you went camping? Before last weekend, I hadn't been since about the 7th grade. I mostly remember waking up in a soaking wet sleeping bag and having to deal with a lot of cold misery in the company of similarly cold and miserable fellow girl scouts. So... last weekend went way better. Our tent was awesome, the weather rocked, and the mountain lake that we camped next to was a beautiful and peaceful place.



Oh, and did I mention the food? Because the chicken I marinated overnight was freakin' phenomenal cooked over a wood fire. (My tip? Marinate and bring in ziplock bag, then dump onto heavy-duty aluminum foil. Mmmm.)



Fire, stars, the sound of tiny pieces of tree debris hitting the tent - just perfect.



And of course, there were the requisite bugs that no trip into nature would be without. Not sure what the kids are fascinated by here. Giant caterpillar? Weird round egg sack? Shed snake skin? We saw all those at one point or another!



The lake was idyllic, if slightly too chilly to swim in. Wish we had a boat!







Then, after packing up, we stumbled on idyllic lake #2! Doesn't this look like a screensaver that came with Windows 8?



Nothing beats throwing rocks into water. It just never gets old somehow. Jake was also a fan of watching the little fish scatter as he flung the pebbles near them.



And finally, because we are trying to commit to always checking out whatever tiny museums we see advertised on the road, we ended up in a coal mining museum, touring a mine that opened in the 1850s and closed in the 1930s. Totally fascinating, and instructive! See kids, isn't it nice that you don't have to work in a pitch black coal mine for 10 hours a day?