Camping trip as recorded by Abigail

Last weekend we packed ourselves up and went camping. I was so looking forward to this--it has been super stressful around here lately and I was really craving some intense time with just our family! (We definitely nailed the intense part--haha!)
It was a wonderful trip. We had an absolutely blissful evening with the kids, a horribly wretched night up with Nathan, and a good morning of hiking, so it all evened out as wonderful. :-) It's funny though because the last time we camped at this particular state park we barely got any sleep, and then this time we got even less! I told Neil it's on my blacklist...it's a beautiful place to hike but we never sleep here, so we'll drive a few minutes south and camp at the other park where the kids always zonk out and snooze contentedly all night long. It will totally work, right?
But the evening with the kids was so great! We got there early enough to not be rushed in set-up and dinner, which always makes a huge difference (I'm thinking of our May trip to the Smokies where we stayed at Dollywood until closing time, had kids throw up in the car twice on the way to the campground, got lost, and then had to set up in the dark by lantern light, and then our air pump drained the car battery and we ended up having to blow all the air mattresses up by mouth AND jump the car). The kids zipped through 4 packs of  "cold dogs" (none of those little weirdos like to roast them) and 2 bags of marshmallows (ugh...good thing they were running around like crazy to counterbalance all of that!), we went on lots of little walks, we checked out the moon, we whittled spears, and generally got totally filthy, stayed up way too late, and had an absolute blast.






One of my favorite bits of the trip was that Abigail was writing this long Post-It note missive to her best friend Amelia. Parts of it were in code, but the bits that weren't were so funny and sweet and gave such a fun perspective on our trip that I'm going to let her do the talking.

Hello Amelia, from goodness knows where! I'm sitting in the car between my two brothers, who talk all the time. Luckily, the trip is only an hour long. I'm about 10 minutes into the trip, so I still have 50 minutes to go. So far, my brothers have been talking nonstop. I'm taking a break from writing now, so bye!

Later...(big coded section that she didn't translate)
Stopped so Dad could take off our bumper because it was dragging on the ground. He put it in a trash can at the gas station. Mom took a picture. It looked halarious! [sic] 15 minutes left--bye for now!!!

Half hour left. Can't wait.

10 minutes. I am itching in anticipation! Literally. I have a mosquito bite I just can't reach.

5 minutes. Can't wait.

4 minutes. I'm wiggling in my seat. 3 minutes. 2 minutes. 1 minute. We're entering the campsite! I haven't been here for years. We're looking for a secluded campground. It's certainly shady here. Oh, I forgot, we're going to Shades. Our site is number 39. Aaannnd we're here! Bye!

This place is amazing. I've never been in a better site. We have our own paved path to the bathroom and guess what? On the bathroom wall, it says there's been sightings of...guess what...it's our mascot...a bobcat! Cool, right? Inside the bathrooms, it's super clean and there are screens on the windows! No moths in here, ha! I hate bugs in bathrooms in the morning. Once I stepped on a beetle. It looked like this--size and all. 

very detailed drawing of beetle

It started gushing green blood--yuck! I ran out screaming. Luckily I wasn't barefoot. That would have been awful. Anyway, Dad's building a fire and it's soooo loud, like if these were the sound waves of a shout, these would be of an ax.

(drawing of sound waves emanating out from a fixed point)

Super loud. Anyway, Mom says I have to stop writing and enjoy the camping, so very reluctantly, I'll have to say bye. Bye! :-(

It's been so long since I last wrote to you. I miss you already even though I saw you 4.5 hours ago! I went on several walks to find wildflowers and I found at least 9 different types. It's still 2 more hours until nighty-night, but before then, I'll give you another update, but I'm not leaving yet--I'm still talking. Sorry, writing! Whoops. We're sleeping with our tent open to the stars. Here's a funny camping story--once, I roasted a marshmallow with a bubble that was bigger than the marshmallow itself. Cool, right? It looked like this:

(drawing of marshmallow on a stick with giant warty bubble on side)

Anyway, about Challenger, I'm so glad my badge won! I would have been even happier though if yours won. I can't wait for mission to the moon. It's sooo cool. If you are in space station first, when you are mission control, you get to try space food! Don't eat green beans though, they taste like rotting {code}. Yuck! Bye for now, I'm going to check out the tent. Dad's putting in mattresses.

much later

It's getting dark, so I'll close for today with a picture of my stick. And here it is. (the one I'm whittling)

Bye for today!

I'm writing this by lantern light. It's 9 pm. I've spent the last 2 hours whittling a spear. I've taken a break to write. Mom is going to take a picture of me doing this. She says I am a funny little cuteycake. I think that {code}. We had a huge fight over a flashlight. (Oh, and by the way, all the stuff I'm writing in code is stuff I don't want read.)

Day 2


Awful night. I went to sleep late, and Nathan, our baby, screamed all night. When I woke up, I couldn't go outside because Mom said people were trying to sleep, so I played a game called mealworms with Juliet, my sister.

The letter ends here--probably because we packed up to go hiking and she was totally worn out afterwards!
So anyway...some photos from our hike.

The end!