Fourth Of July - Camping

We had planned a trip up to Holland, Michigan for the holiday weekend to hang out at the beach and see Ben's extended family. We weren't supposed to leave till Saturday morning, but since it's a 4 hour drive, I was eager to get up north and have as much down time as possible - so we decided to camp on Friday night!

Ben and I have enjoyed camping in the past, but this was our first time taking Lucy. She did great! All in all the camping experience was not that fun because it rained our entire trip up to the campsite so the campgrounds were extremely muddy and all of the wood was wet. Plus the actual campsite we stayed at was not that nice and the amenities were only so-so (i.e. no fire pit, not all sites had picnic benches, there was no gravel to drive on so cars kept getting stuck in the mud). Also, I think we will probably wait to try camping till Lucy is a little older next time - although she was a happy camper, it was a lot of work to get the tent set up, get the fire going and cook dinner and she couldn't really enjoy the things that make camping fun like roasting marshmallows and cooking hot dogs over the fire.

Here's Ben and Lucy setting up the tent...




Dinner! The fire took so long to make because of all the damp wood, but Ben worked hard and finally got some nice heat going!


Lucy and I spent a lot of time in the back of the car - it was much drier, less buggy and all in all a better place for mommy to sit


Especially after Lucy found the mud puddles...


That was fun to clean up.

We had planned on making breakfast the next morning but we didn't want to have to rebuild the fire and we were pretty ready to wash up and get out of the swamp, so we decided to go out for breakfast. This left us a little extra time in the morning before Ben's family got there so we made a pit stop to pick some fresh Michigan cherries..




This was a lot of fun and I loved the spontaneity of our morning, but I wouldn't recommend taking a 15 month old to pick cherries... she wanted to put each one in her mouth, which we normally wouldn't mind except the fact that these cherries had pits and we were nervous about her choking. Better to try a blueberry farm next time!