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What do you do when you have a long holiday weekend? Go camping in your new camper of course!! I had my youngest for the weekend so planned a camping trip for 4th of July weekend. Decided that Daniel Boone National Forest sounded like a fun time! The plan was to leave Friday after work and come back Monday early afternoon so that Elisa could make it to work. She also had to be back for the parade on Tuesday, so we had 3 days and I was so excited!
FRIDAY
Since I knew that I would be leaving early evening and we had a long drive ahead of us, I asked Kayleigh, my oldest, to bring Elisa to my office. It was a good thing she did because we ended up arriving after dark. The main gate into the campground was closed and we had no idea where our site was located. We got super lucky that a campground host was driving by when we got there and she directed us toward our site.
While AC and his son Zeek got the camper set up and stabilized, Elisa and I worked inside getting everything put away and beds made. After everything was done, we went back outside to hang out for a little bit.
Since we arrived so late, we just hung around the camp, while the kids played with sparklers and climbed some trees in the dark. Loki, their beautiful Argentine Dogo, enjoyed just walking, exploring and running around with the kiddos. We didn’t stay out too long and were back in the camper within a couple hours getting ready for bed.
SATURDAY
The next morning, after a quick breakfast, and of course coffee, the kids and I took a little drive over to the beach to explore. There was no one around! We thought that the little general store would be open, but it was completely closed up! We couldn’t figure out why the store wouldn’t be open and the beach was completely empty on a great holiday weekend. So, we walked back down to the beach and Zeek attempted to teach Elisa how to skip rocks. It was so cute, but apparently she inherited my lack of rock skipping skills.
After going back to the campground, we decided to all go for a little hike. There was a small trail off the main campground road, so we checked it out! We knew there was water back there because we’d seen the views while driving, but no matter which way we went, we just couldn’t seem to find the water. Unfortunately, due to some medical issues I’d been having, I was unable to hike very far so we headed back to the campsite.
On the way back, we found a cool turtle trying to cross the road so we picked him up and moved him to the other side. He was just so cute and hung out there and let us take some pics of him! I really wanted to take him home with me but the last time we did that, we ended up having to donate the poor guy to a school. We’ll always miss you Sunshine!
We made our way back to camp to relax. Elisa went to her bunk to play on her phone, Zeek went to the couch to play on his and I went and took a little nap. Later, I began prepping food for some foil packs while AC got a fire going. Foil camps is one of those easy meals that I love for camping, or even a lazy summer night at home. I discovered these amazing little things during a Girl Scout trip. I prepped brats and Italian sausage, corn, green beans, potatoes, peppers and onions. Then, each person fills their packet with exactly what they want, and top it with butter and seasonings before sealing it up. It would then get cooked in the oven or on the grill at home. Since we were camping, we threw them on the little grill. I also made some Mac and cheese to go with it.
While the food cooked, we played with Loki, playing tugging of war and throwing toys for him. He’s such a big baby and loves lots of attention. He also has big dog syndrome, where they don’t seem to realize just how big they are and think they make perfect lap dogs. Because he’s so big and messy, I usually don’t like him in the camper too much, so when we would go in, he would stare at us through the screen…creeper lol.
After we were done eating, we sat by the fire for a bit. We had a bunch of fire wood and planned on having a fire going all night. However, the campground host made her way over and was telling us about a large storm that was headed our direction. She told us we needed to put the awning back in and put away anything we didn’t want to blow away. The sky didn’t look too bad, but we took her word for it. Good thing we did! That storm came in fast and hard!! While it poured outside, the 4 of us, plus Loki of course, hung out inside, watching movies for the rest of the night, with the volume all the way up to hear over the storm.
SUNDAY
Sunday morning we woke up to everything being drenched. But even after that crazy storm the night before, we woke up to a beautiful morning. We packed up some water and snacks and took another drive. This time, we left the campground and explored the area. We stopped a few times to try to get some good pics of the views and water, but there were generally too many trees in the way to see much if anything.
As we continued driving, we eventually saw a small road on our left. We turned around and made our way back to it. Because it was such a tiny road, I couldn’t tell if it was someone’s driveway, or maybe just a maintenance road. I stopped at the entrance, while AC and Zeek followed the road up. They called me within a few minutes and said that we HAD to come up the road; they had found a great trail for us!
The boys found Tater Knob Fire Tower trail, which had been on my to-do list, but didn’t have enough signal out there to pull up the map! This trail is super short, only 0.6 miles but definitely got a workout. There are so many steps and climbing up rocks that my legs were killing me by the time we made it the tower. Elisa and Zeek enjoyed finding the little spaces to climb in and out of and there were lots of beautiful flowers.
Once we finally made it to the top, we learned that the ladder for the tower had been removed. That didn’t stop these boys though as they climbed up the bars to the top! As beautiful as I thought the views were from where I was, they didn’t even compare to the complete panoramic views that they got from up there!
We made our way back down the trail and back to the car, still exhilarated by our little adventure. We drove around a little more, but didn’t see any other cool trails so we went back to the campground We drove up and down the the campground roads, seeing how others set up their camps, seeing the damage done by the storm and any wildlife that decided to hang out on the side of the road watching us. The rest of the day was pretty laid back and we didn’t do much.
MONDAY
The next morning, we got everything all packed up and made the drive back home. It was a great weekend, full of just enough adventures for our group. I think we all had a great time but we were more than happy to make our way back to civilization.
I love long holiday weekends and can’t wait to get away for the next one! What’s your favorite holiday getaway?