Camping Trip - Day One!

Monday dawned bright and sunny - perfect camping weather! We headed out early enough to make it to McDonald's for breakfast - yum! - and drove out into the hills. We went through lots of interesting little old towns on the way, and past a HUGE dam - I should've take pictures of these! The lake is actually a really, really big dam pond. Anyway, this was the view from our campsite! Mike's hanging out...ahhhh, finally, a chance to relax! Chloe seemed to have a great time! Blowing tree branches are always a big hit, and she really seemed to like her first encounter with a campfire, too! I couldn't get her to sit normally on my lap - she kept maneuvering to get a better look at that cool fire... This is the "kitchen." The other campground we went to had one, too. It looks like it's basically a place where you're supposed to prepare all your food. What was interesting as we were looking for campsites this time (okay, Mike did all the work), we found that many places wouldn't allow you to have a campfire or even a grill at your campsite - you had to actually cook your food in the kitchen! One of the things that made this campground a winner was that we could have a fire at our campsite. The weather forecast for our camping time wasn't so hot, so I ran out and bought a sun/rain shelter before we left. Hmmm... does this look right to you?? We thought that this was supposed to be really simple to put up and couldn't figure out what we were doing wrong - until we noticed that the frame was 220 cm and the tarp was 250 cm. Oops! It kept the rain off, but I still need to return it.