Camping or Glamping? (and Pinterest project testing)

Between all of the relaxing I'm getting to do on the weekends, and then all of the catching up on life that involves work and chores doing the week, I haven't taken much time to update either of my blogs.

Needless to say though, we are settling into camping life quite nicely.  I'm not sure at which point we might have to call it "glamping" life instead but we still do all of our cooking over a fire so I'm going to count it as camping :-)  We definitely do have lots of the comforts of home though.  Here are some snippets from the past few weekends...coming home on Sundays is always SOO hard!

Our little slice of peace in the woods.  Our camping neighbors let us know that a lot of the other campers name their campsite so we set out as a family to pick one.  The girls and Henry finally settled on Restful Rocky Ridge and I took on the task of painting our sign.  After the fact I thought of "Little Camper in the Big Woods" --- maybe next time my bookish self will be more on the ball.   You can also see Henry went BIG when he had wood delivered, we have enough for lots of campfires.  We're also looking forward to chilling out up on our little patio under the canopy in the shade as the weather heats up...I'm pretty sure the campground pool is going to be too cold for me!



Just a few little images from around the campsite.  I really love my old man gnome - it was my pops and it makes me feel like a little piece of my folks are there with me at this campground where I spent so much time with them.

The hedgehogs I just thought were too cute to resist!

Hank is enjoying smelling (and probably trying to eat) the plants that were already planted around the campsite that popped up in the last week or so... what a nice surprise!

Our Pinterest fire-starters worked... kind of.  Though don't catch fire quite as easily as I thought they should and after examining the ones our neighbors made I think we overfilled them a bit with wax... I made round two tonight - hopefully we will have more success this weekend after that tweak!  They did at least smell lovely as I added some lavender essential oil to them... hmmm... maybe that borders on glamping.

We pretty much aren't cooking at the campground if you can't make it on a fire (or in a coffee pot!).  So far so good - we have burned a few things but you can't really mess up hot dogs and baked beans.  I'll be scouring Pinterest for more interesting ideas in the coming weeks... one cannot survive on hot dogs and sandwiches cooked in our pie makers forever!

Just a few quick pics of our favorite activities :-)

I had grand visions of being able to put together a puzzle without Margo trying to destroy it but then Hank chewed up a piece... silly me.

I do have to say that the zero gravity chairs are pretty fantastic... I wasn't sure they could be worth the hype - but it's pretty fun to have a camping recliner - perfect for reading.  Here's what we read this weekend.

Henry read: Stepmother by Marianne Lile
This is a book that I brought home to read myself but Henry picked it up in the camper during a rain shower and then finished the whole book that weekend! He really enjoyed it and laughed out loud several times remarking that he could see the similarities in some of the author's stepmother struggles and my own. He might be embarrassed that I share this but he also very kindly reiterated how thankful he is for all I do taking on that role and that the book shed some fresh light on exactly how difficult it can be.

I read and am still currently reading: Wolf Hollow by Lauren Wolk
I've heard great things about it and so far I am loving the writing - I'll post more once I'm finished.

That's all for now - thanks for joining me on our adventure!
Peace, love, and paw prints,
The Camping Librarian

Adventures in Camping - figuring it all out...

Jenny girl cried each

Sunday afternoon when time 

to leave the campground.

Thirty years later

heart still sinks when the last flames

burn out, no more smores. 

So we bought a camper.  I've wanted one for a long time but we really just started to seriously think about it a few weeks ago and in typical Henry and Jen fashion, once we got an idea in our head, it happened pretty fast.  We're a pretty decisive pair (or impulsive - on of those!) :-)  Luckily I love to research, plan, and organize!  

We found a great used camper, Henry enjoyed negotiating a good deal (I didn't think people really enjoyed this process but I'm pretty sure he does...I don't get it!), and then I enjoyed making maps of possible campground locations and then weighing all of the positives and negatives of them... you wouldn't think this would need to be such a process but I like to leave no rock unturned!  

After all of the looking and exploring we finally settled on the campground that I practically grew up in.  We found our "vacation home" parking spot at Round Top Campground.  I learned to ride my bike, swim, and roast a perfect hot dog here.  I felt like I was home as soon as we arrived and it was the last place we looked at (and we scoured Maryland and Southern PA).  The first decoration I added to our campsite was a garden gnome that was my dad's because I felt like it belonged there in a place where he loved more than it belonged under the bushes of my townhouse.  

Once we found "our spot" we had to negotiate getting a camper delivered (yeah - we bought a camper without a vehicle to tow it - we're brilliant that way).  Luckily many campgrounds now have the option to rent a site for a whole camping season... it was kind of a fiasco but it's in place now...

 The biggest challenge we came across was wondering why our power slowly went out on Friday night - only to realize that Shannon had tripped over the power cord that runs from the camper to the electric hook up earlier in the evening and the battery had slowly run down without it...it did however take us quite a lot of worrying about what we had set up wrong before we remembered her tripping in that area!

All in all I think everyone has taken to camping quite well ... Hank is the biggest fan of all -- enjoying digging holes, eating all the sticks he wants and protecting our campsite from other dogs in the campground by barking loudly at them.  He's such a tough little guy in his pom-pom sweatshirt!

Here are some pictures from our first weekend ... stay tuned for continued adventures in camping...

Brussels Sprouts on a hot dog stick... pinterest fail.

Cinnamon roll dough either wrapped around the hot dog stick or in the pie maker ... both pinterest wins! YUM!

Why is Hank on the kitchen table in the camper? sigh.  

Bonus feature: 

In case you're wondering here are the top three things we (OK "I") looked for in a campground...

1. Clean public bathhouses. I don't like taking a shower in a tiny camper shower.  The water pressure stinks and you can hardly move.  Clean showers with privacy are a must in my book!

2. A pool and some things for the kiddos to do.  

3. Nature!  I know this sounds like it should be a quality of all campgrounds but you would be surprised at how many I found that felt more like a field for people to park their campers.  I wanted some hills, some trees, some squirrels and birds to watch and some sticks for Hank to eat.