Camping

While Reuben is gallivanting on the John Muir trail in California with his brother Nick and sister-in-law Jess, Eden and I took a week long vacation with my mom and sister. Last Saturday, July 19, we left our home in Hamilton and drove to Smith’s Falls, Ontario (about 5 hours away). Here is the trunk of our little Toyota Echo with all our camping supplies for a week:

We packed a picnic lunch and ate by the roadside on the way to Smiths Falls:

At Smith’s Falls, we attended their annual Chocolate and Railway Festival. Unfortunately, we got there a little late to participate in most of the fun activities, but we ate a bit of chocolate and visited their museum. here’s a pic of eden at the museum:

Then we found the Iroquois campground, about an hour outside of Smith’s falls, close to the US border. They were having an annual fly-in. Which is basically about 50-60 small airplanes all flying in for breakfast. Unfortunately, it was foggy and the only plane able to make it was from a nearby hanger. It was a good breakfast though. Here’s Eden in the basin sink at the campsite, getting a scrub down:

Here’s the one plane that could drive in:

Most of the driving on the trip, my sister Alissa entertained/fed/played with/napped with eden in the back seat. Thank you SO much Alissa! Here they are:

The same morning as the fly-in breakfast, we drove south to New York to the Adirondack Park – which I believe is the largest state park in the lower 48. On the drive, we experienced our first rainfall. We drove into our campsite at Fish Creek Pond and set up in the rain:

Fish Creek Pond campground is beautiful. Most of the campsites border on your own entry to one of the three lakes the campsite surrounds. We had planned to stay 4 nights at Fish Creek. Due to the weather, we set up one tent and all stayed in the same tent. Here’s Eden sleeping:

Since it was raining, we spent some time in a nearby town, Tupper Lake, and went grocery shopping and also got another tarp for the campsite. When it was not raining, we checked out their playground and beach:

That night, in the evening it stopped raining and we were able to have a campfire and smores.

The next day, Monday, it was raining so we drove to a nearby town, Lake Placid, home of the 1932 and 1980 Winter Olympics. The weather there was amazing. And the town of Lake Placid is beautiful. We shopped, dined and went on a boat tour with these people:

Here’s the view of Lake Placid:

And here’s one of the many beautiful homes on Lake Placid:

And here’s Mirror Lake, very close to Lake Placid and also a very calm and beautiful lake:

We got back to a rainy campsite again. We were able to have another campfire and then went to sleep. The next day, in the morning, we heard the forecast for the next few day: raining/monsoon type weather! So we decided to pack up camp and head for a hotel. We went back to our favourite little town of Lake Placid. We stayed in a nice little hotel with a separate bedroom (so eden could sleep at night with us awake) and a kitchenette. We spent some time all over Lake Placid and it hardly rained there during the day. But it poured at night when we were nice and cozy in our beds. We spent 2 days in Lake Placid. Here we are bobsledding:

had to get a pic of us in an adirondack chair!

On Thursday, we packed up again and didn’t know where we would end up. We spent some more time around Lake Placid and went to the High Falls Gorge:

Then we drove back towards Canada hoping for better weather. We stopped in Kingston Ontario and it was still raining so we decided to just keep driving home. But our vacation wasn’t over yet. It was only Thursday night so we needed to find something to do on Friday. We decided to spend the day at a nearby provincial park – Bronte Creek. We were able to swim in a large pool, pet some animals, go on a hike, go to a little museum and then go swimming again. here’s Eden and her Aunt Ali listening to music:

We drove home, put eden in bed, ate pizza and ice cream and watched a movie. It was a glorious vacation! The Adirondacks are just beautiful. On the way out there, we drove past some touring bicyclists and I decided that as a family, we will be touring the Adirondacks at some point in the future.

Eden did wonderfully on the whole vacation. She quickly learned how to fall asleep in the stroller and she took naps all over the place! On Saturday, it was our first day with just me and her again and it was a difficult transition. She was used to a lot of attention from her doting aunt and gramma so she was quite clingy to mommy on Saturday and Sunday. Today is the last day of my vacation. Eden is at childcare and I’m going to go out for lunch and to a movie and then… who knows? Maybe clean the house a little too! Reuben gets back from his vacation tomorrow. He’ll have much better pictures as he had the better camera! He’ll be posting shortly about his long trek to the top of Mt. Whitney.