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.
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