A camping trip to Shenandoah

Hello, I'm back from the mountains! 

In today's post, you will find lots of craziness, outside pics, references to our crazy imaginations, too many pics of water, and no pictures of Maria. Also magic gnats that turn into jumbo house flies overnight.

So my family went to Hazel's house, and we stayed the night and did last minute packing. Which meant the moms packed while we ran around like lunatics and finally got piled into the cars, leaving many things behind. Like pajama pants, and toothbrushes. We remembered the dolls though! 😀

Hazel and three of her siblings all had soccer practice that day, and we went as well. Hazel has a new baby brother, who I might have mentioned, and while she was practicing her mom fed the baby, and went to go watch one of the siblings for a bit, and gave me the baby, since it's been forever since I've burped a baby and I missed doing it. So I was trying to get him to burp, but he wasn't interested, and he just went to sleep instead. My back was hurting, sitting so straight, and since he wasn't going to wake up, I just lay down on my back on the blanket, and he lay on my chest and kept on sleeping, and WAS SO ADORABLE. I love love love infants. 💙💙💙

Then when they finished, we ate potato soup and played orphans, and then dragons, and spent most of the time running from a small blond dino who bit pretty hard, and clawed very effectively for a t-rex. 

When we left the next morning, Hazel came in our van, and we drove up to the mountains. Ivy and Hazel covered their eyes and wondered how far of a drop we could survive, and would it be better to fly of a bare cliff, or a very very very steep slope with trees growing out of the sides? But I enjoyed the sharp turns, getting looks out so far down and out, and up, feeling like you're on top of the world. (However, I would probably scream the loudest if we had fallen 😜)  

(Is that my finger in the photo? Most certainly not! *cough*)

And here is a view from our campsite! Plenty of growth between us and the other campers. Also the perfect place to drop a piece of salami, and fret for a while about bears before finally finding it. But I digress. There were also tons of gnats. Keep that in mind.

Hi! I wanted my picture in this weird tree, and mama agreed, and offered Ashley and Ruthie a photo shoot as well. but they didn't want to......

They preferred to play in all that. Uhg, probably getting ticks. *shudder*

Who is Ashley, you say? This is Ashley, Hazel's renamed Tenny doll. Ashley and Hazel did agree to one photo, and this turned out really good!

Ruthie's, not so much. How did I get that lighting????

Hrrumff. You could have done a better job. 

You didn't even want one any way!

Well if I had to sit for it, it could at least turn out right.

Why don't you go amaze Camille with some more second hand bear stories?

Fine. But don't tell her I got them from you! She's convinced that I wrestled it into submission before it left us alone.

You're telling her that?

Yeah.

Guess what I'm gonna do....

Don't you dare!

*laughs* *runs off*

*runs after her shrieking*

Ahem. Anyway, you will get to hear where that second hand bear tale came from later. 😉

And here's kit's photo, not my best, but good.

And then it raindddddddddd.......

But by the next day, it was nice and dry, and hot.

So we went hiking! It was all mostly downhill, which did not bode well for the trip back.

We hiked along, singing loudly and out of tune, mostly on purpose. We sang:

We also sang 'blow the man down' but I made up different lyrics. 😛

We found this really cool wall!

And lots of creeks, I love taking pictures of water. 🌊💙

💙

This was part of the trail! Walking across a creek on rocks, I loved it! Especially watching the grown ups. 😋

Ok, it's time to tell you the bear story.

I'm not 100% certain how it started, it's just that Daisy had gone a little ahead, and then we were being condensed into a small group by the parents, while Daisy was talking quickly and excitedly about a bear the size of a large dog that had run across the path in front of her and disappeared into the bushes. We spotted it's head higher up, it was behind a log, looking at us. My dad started leading us down the path, and the bear trundled along side with us for a while, and then turned away and disappeared over the ridge. It was so cool! 

We got to climb on the rocks up this waterfall. It was super fun. 🙂

And yes, the walk back was TORTURE. It took forever to get back, and we kept stopping to rest. We were pretending that we were shapeshifters, running from people who wanted to put us in zoo's. But I wasn't sure whether it helped, or just made it seen even harder, imagining turning into a deer and prancing up there. Or a mountain goat. 🦌🐐

When it got dark, after dinner, we would roast marshmallows, two at a time, and have a s'more for each hand while we ate them, and brushed the gnats away from our sticky faces. Then we toasted some more, and kept eating them until we ran out of marshmallows. They were delicious. 

On the second night, Hazel's mom pulled out her guitar, and started playing, and singing hymns and praise songs that we knew. We all gathered around and sang. I've always loved singing. The way it lifts you up, and fills your soul. It was so beautiful that night. It was hard to believe when my mom got a video of it on her phone, we all sounded out of tune. But it sounded beautiful that night, and that's what mattered.

🎶♫🎵𝅘𝅥𝅱𝅘𝅥𝅮♩𝅘𝅥𝅲𝅗𝅥♪🎶𝅘𝅥𝅯𝆕♬♫🎵𝅘𝅥𝅱𝅘𝅥𝅮♩𝅗𝅥♪🎶𝅘𝅥𝅯𝆕♬

Then we had to go home.

The morning we left, the thousands of gnats had turned into thousands of jumbo house flies. They were huge! And there was not a gnat in sight! It was so weird.

It forever to get home, because mom and dad stopped at....what was it called? The place where that  general surrendered, and the little girl, Lula, left her doll in the room, and the soldiers took it, and the Lula never saw her doll again. (😒) No? Whatever, I'm googling it.

Appomattox court house, that must be it. We got to see the actual doll, which was cool. 🙂

But it was hot, and everybody was cranky and tired, and just wanted to go home, instead of walk around in the sun, around some place we were going to learn about next year. So I didn't enjoy it as much as I could have.

Then we finally got home. 🙂

And I finally finished this post. 😆

TTFN, ta ta for now!

Have you been camping? Did you enjoy it? Do like photos of water?

 How about exploring along creeks? How many s'mores have 

you eaten in one night? (I never count, so when a 

parent asks I can say, 'I don't know') (😂)

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Hey, what about us!

Yeah mom, don't we get to sign off?

I thought you left.

But we were in the post, so we get to sign off. Bloggy rules.

Bloggy isn't a word. 

Sure it is!

Ok, go ahead and sign off if you want.

Yay!

Yay!

toodles, from 

and g'bye from