A little backpacking trip

When we told the kids mid-June that we had a week of vacation coming up with no plans for a few days, the kid's first question was, "Can we go camping?" 

Ummm... YES. 

Let's go camping. 

Garrett did the John Muir trail last Autumn with my brother and brother's in law, so the girls have talked about backpacking all winter long, and been quite desperate to have a try at it. Meanwhile Garrett has been building our backpacking gear collection steadily for a few years.

We decided to backpack into a campsite at a local park that has backpacking specific campsites, hoping this would be the best of all our favorite things... and it pretty much was. It was an added bonus that we did it during the work week, so for the first night we were the only ones there. 

Unfortunately I lost half my pictures from this trip when I was transferring them from my phone, and I deleted them from my phone before I realized it. Of course. For the most part, I'm okay with it. There was just one pic of Keira and Daria that I am super bummed to have lost.  

The flooded St. Croix River.

 Starting out. We had Keira carry Daria so that I could carry our gear with Garrett. I think she might have gotten the poo end of the stick out of all of us with regards to weight carried to body weight ratio, but she carried her like a champ. It was particularly precious to hear their little conversations.  Also the fact that Daria matched her breathing to Keira's the whole way was pretty much awesome. When Keira was out of breath, so was Daria. Which both amused and offended Keira. Haha! So funny. Both Keira and Brie did awesome with the packs and weights they had though, so it will be really fun to add more backpacking trips in to our adventure excursions as we can.

The view from our tent.

Since my pack was only thirty-one pounds, and it was a short hike, I brought my hexie quilt top to hand stitch. I'm so glad I did! It was fun to have. I'm probably the only person in the history of ever who's brought something like that along on a backpacking trip, but I can live with that.

Waiting for breakfast.

The child who has NEVER willingly slept in our arms took two naps snuggled up with her parents. 

Sister snuggles.

My morning wake up call.
"Mom! Mom! Up! Up!"

We had an amazing time. I can't even describe how badly it was needed for us. It was SO SO good to just get out and camp. And, it was fun to appreciate the deciduous forest... which is something that is so weird to us. The mosquitoes we could all do without, of course, and my super paranoid tick checks 30 times a day, but it was worth it.

Packing up.

She objected to the breaking down of the tents.

These two set up their own tent, and broke it down again. They did awesome!

Leaving camp.

 Our adventures included a very healthy, large, bold raccoon that would not take a hint and leave us alone. We think it probably gets voluntarily fed a lot, or just marches into camp after people go to bed and takes what he wants. Thankfully Garrett had packed all our food in the bear canister simply to keep in organized and so it wouldn't get smooshed.  For the record, bear canisters are also raccoon proof. Daria thought it was adorable and kept trying to go to it. "Dog?! Dog?! Hi Dog! Dog so tyoot!" (cute)

It was technically Daria's first camping trip, although she's gotten the opportunity to sleep in a tent a few times. She had so much fun, and we are all looking forward to introducing her to more and more camping as time goes by.