Camping

The kids had been out of school for six days and still there would be no school on Monday. We had spent all our free days trying to pull the house and yard back together after the hurricane that we hadn't had time to enjoy our "vacation". Kent was in Austin for the weekend going to school, so the kids and I loaded up the car and met Kent in Brenham and drove up to Somerville State Park. We seem to be outgrowing our little van especially when we load up six bikes and all our camping gear.


Although we got to the campsite around 10pm we managed to pick a great site and set up our camp before crashing into our sleeping bags.


I thought it was funny that some sort of squash was growing in the gravel below the water spicket.

There were so many bugs!!! I've never been camping with so many bugs and that's saying something because I've been camping a lot. The bug we noticed the most were spiders. There were spider webs everywhere; they attached the grass blades like a big dot-to-dot, we had to break our way way through the door of our tent the next morning, I felt like everywhere we walked we were wiping webs off us. I took pictures of some.

As I leaned my bike against the tree I found this bug crawling in a hole. I'm not sure what it was, but it was ugly.

I was amazed at the long legs on this spider.

I found this one crawling on my handle bars while I was riding. It was very green and had a funny shaped body.


First thing after breakfast the kids tried fishing. It didn't work out so well. Kyli got eaten up by fire ants. Kipp's line got stuck on a rock. Kara and Kati thought it might be fun to swim, but changed their minds.

Kipp finally gave up trying to get his hook off the rock and cut it.


Kent also didn't do so well while the kids fished. His allergies hit an all time high. He took every allergy medicine we had with us, but still no relief. He was pretty miserable. Poor guy, look at those bags under his eyes.

As we recovered from our bad fishing experience we had a snack and got ready for a bike ride.

Kati is a real trooper, she's the only one without gears and she has such little tires that she has to peddle twice as fast just to keep up. This is always my favorite part about camping.


After the ride the kids enjoyed posing for the camera to show how hot and exhausted they were.



While we were cooling off and having lunch Kent saw a crane land on a tree across the lake. We all spent a long time trying to find in amongst the trees, because it's gray feathers were the same color as the trees it was very hard to spot. Finally, Kent took a picture to point it out so we knew where to look.

After lunch we started packing up. It was probably the shortest camping trip ever, but Kent's allergies were out of control and he was miserable.

Kipp was very excited to be the one to get on the roof of the van to help with the bikes.

Kati wanted to get on the roof for some pictures.

Kent needed a little help staying on the van while he strapped the bikes down.

The kids were hot, tired and getting bored while we finished loading up.

Kati seems to have found the best spot to wait, in the van with her Nintendo DS.

The ride home was a little cozy. Sometimes it's difficult getting a picture of Kipp being serious. He's a very silly boy.
After getting home we finished our camping trip with our favorite camping dinner, foil dinners. Then we topped it off with s'mores. Even though is was a very short trip it was a lot of fun.