A Trip to Remember

Camping.I have great memories of camping with my family when I was a kid. We camped in a pop-up trailer when I was little, and a bigger camper when I got a bit older. In high school we graduated to tent camping at goat shows. Then I got married to a hard core tent camper. Matt even tent camps in the snow! We have done a little bit of camping together, but not a whole lot. Life just whips on by. But this week was camping week for us all.

Our friends Jim and Karon have a ski boat and invited us to go camping with them at Lake DeGray. We jumped at the opportunity and headed out on Wednesday. We had a fabulous 4 days of boating, tubing, water skiing, fishing, swimming, cliff jumping, exploring, eating, and playing games. We love Jim and Karon, and had a blast getting to know them better. There were two minor snags in the trip. First, it was stinkin' hot! Seriously, we were over 100 every day, with the heat index reaching 118 on Saturday. At night it cooled down a lot...into the 80's. Humid. Hot. Humid. Gross. I was so thankful for the boat and the lake. Snag #2 was a snag for Matt. Actually, it wasn't a snag, it was a minor disaster. Let's just say that riding a razor scooter down an asphalt hill while wearing only shorts and sneakers is a bad idea. Final score: Asphalt 5, Matt 0.

Here are some highlight photos.

Matt skis. Unfortunately no one got any pics of me when I was skiing.

We tore up the lake on our tube. Snapper was the biggest daredevil of all!


Everyone had fun cliff jumping...until we saw two cottonmouths in the rocks we were jumping off of.

Fun on the boat.





Fun around camp. Pepper delighted in putting rocks in the coolers, in people's drinks, in the tent, in the water, etc. He also enjoyed catching frogs and playing with worms.


First time fishing for Pepper and Snapper. Success for both!



Fun in the water. We found a perfect little cove for swimming. The water was deep and peaceful.


Puppy love. Little J developed quite the crush on Snapper this week. The feelings were mutual. We caught them holding hands a few times, and they were inseperable all week. He even proposed on Saturday! Needless to say, this has resulted in some good conversation with Snapper. My baby is starting to grow up a little bit.


God's glorious creativity. We had spectacular sunsets over the lake each night.

The high point of the entire trip took place the first night. Jim went up to the bathrooms, then came back and called us all to go for a little walk to see what he had found. We walked up the path in the dark, cresting a small hill. There, just below the hill, were thousands and thousands of fireflies. The woods were full of them. I have never seen anything like it! It took my breath away! I was able to perch my camera on the edge of a picnic table there in the dark, and set the shutter to stay open for 15 seconds. Look closely at the picture. Each dot of light is a firefly that flashed within the frame of my very zoomed-in lens. Multiply that by about 100 and you get a tiny glimpse of what we saw! Glorious! Seriously though, click on the picture to enlarge it and you'll see just how many fireflies were there!