#15 French Creek State Park

So, I know. I'm a little behind, but there's no time like the present to catch up, right?

Andy and I went to our 15th state park, French Creek State Park, for our annual 4th of July camping trip  this year. it was only about an hour and a half away from where we live, but it felt like we were in the middle of nowhere! The weather was predicted to be over 100 degrees that weekend, so we did our best to prepare for that, with lots of water, and bathing suits (since the park had a pool). 

we had a HUGE campsite that was nice and secluded (e.g., has trees/shrubs on both sides so you aren't right up against somebody else's tent).

We took a hike to Hopewell Furnace National Historic Site (which is completely surrounded by the park), and we happened to catch a casting demonstration and talk about the site, which was very important for Pennsylvania's iron heritage.

[I am pretty sure I took more photos than this, but sadly, I can't find them right now.]

But anyway, it was super hot that day, so after we finished our walk, we did head over the pool. The pool provided some relief, but there was a ton of people there, and the pool was really shallow, like only 2 feet deep, so it was warm and kind of gross. but cold water to drink was nice, and i worked on my color for the wedding. it was too hot to do mostly anything else. 

We had a horrible storm while we were there (that happened last year too), but this was so bad, we moved ourselves in our vehicle away from our campsite--the trees were swaying too much. we came back, and our bathroom had no electricity nor hot water. i took a freezing cold shower the next morning, but i needed to get clean. the electricity came back shortly afterwards.

we had a good weekend away--i had a tough time since i had just found out the day before that the train on my wedding dress had been cut off. my mind was elsewhere. but having no cell service helped i think. 

it was nice to spend some time together with my soon-to-be-husband. we had planned on doing some wedding related planning out in the woods, mostly that we were going to write our own vows and fine tune the ceremony. with the dress drama, i couldn't do anything wedding. and we never did write our own vows, and we did the ceremony fine tuning about a week before the wedding--talk about stressful!


French Creek was a nice park--yay for #15!

so long 2011, hello 2012!

2011 was by far dominated by ups and downs. i started off the new years with andy's family out in northwestern PA, while my parents packed up the home they had lived in for my whole life and moved to texas. andy and i had started looking at houses in late 2010, and we spent all of 2011 continuing to live in our rented 1890s farmhouse. 

we had some adventures:

Texas (San Antonio & Houston)

Promised Land State Park (PA)

lots of kayaking

river safety patrol

Madison, Wisconsin

Siesta Key, Florida

 We reached some milestones:

100,000 miles on the Echo.

and a car with 7 miles on it.

 We had some setbacks:

my poor echo

a basement full of water

We spent some time with family and lost some family.

I took up a new form of exercise (hot yoga!!).


I had some major work projects come together, ones that i put together all on my own and saw them through to completion. [hey, maybe a promotion in 2012?]


and of course, the most exciting news of all- we got engaged!

maybe you can't tell it from my face, but at this point, i'm still in disbelief.

the last two months of 2011 flew past as we set a wedding date, picked a place for the ceremony/reception, booked a band, ceremony musicians, a photographer, and i bought the dress! 


we spent thanksgiving with andy's family, and christmas with my family (almost all of them!)

just the grandkids (mom's side)

dad's side (minus 3)

earthquake, hurricanes, snowstorms in october... all in all, i'd have to say 2012 was good, even with the pretty rough patch in the middle there. hopefully 2012 will be good all around. i have a feeling that august 18, 2012 will be an especially good day! :)

happy new years!

#14 Big Pocono State Park

Our plans for this weekend kept changing. We had planned to spend the weekend with the safety patrol, but changed our minds with the horrible thunderstorm rolling in Friday afternoon/evening. We did not feel like driving 3 hours, setting a tent up in a thunderstorm, and enduring a night of pouring rain (again) to find out the river would be higher than we would have liked. 

So, we stayed home Friday night and planned for our alternate weekend--knocking some more PA State Parks off our list. To make a long story short, our alternate weekend plan changed since it didn't rain up river, so we decided to stop at a new State Park on Saturday on the way up and go on river patrol on Sunday. 

Big Pocono State Park didn't require a full day because it's main attraction is the view. You're on top of Camelback Mountain (yes, of the famed Camelback Ski Area & CamelBeach)--which interestingly enough, the facilities of Big Pocono are maintained by the Camelback company.  Who knew that was possible? 


The pictures don't do it justice. It was beautiful. We could see for miles -- even all the way to the Delaware Water Gap. Andy likes how the clouds shade the world below. It definitely makes you feel so small!

view!

the Delaware Water Gap from Camelback Mountain

We then went on a 2.5 mile hike, looked at some more vistas and ate some wild blueberries. It was a good choice for the amount of time we had and where we were headed. We did pass by (within 5 miles!) of two other state parks. I was tempted, but knew we didn't have the time.  

mmm. wild blueberries!

 hope you had a good weekend!

#13 Promised Land State Park

It's been almost a YEAR since we added a new PA State Park to our list. I know, ridiculous. We really like camping on the 4th of July weekend, and it gives us a good excuse to check out a new park each year. 

We had chosen #13 as Promised Land SP (Greentown, PA, in the Poconos) as we had planned to camp with two other couples. We wanted to visit a park that was close to the other couples and that had activities that everybody would enjoy: hiking, boating, fishing. Well, the plan fizzled out (partially over the course of the weekend, due to work commitments and illness). So Andy and I camped on our own. 

there's our spaceship tent!

On Friday, we set up, got organized, and drove around the park to check out the different areas (day use beach, boat launches, trailheads, etc). It's a big park, so there was a lot to see just by car!

On Saturday, we went for a 3-4 mile hike in the AM. The first part was a mountain bike/hiking trail, and was VERY muddy. The next section of the hike was a horse/hiking trail (watch out for road apples!), which apparently is not used very often. We were essentially bushwhacking through trees, shrubs, ferns, and the occasional raspberry bush (read: thorns). There were a couple small stream crossings (less than 5 feet across), and then we reached this:

We had to cross this stream--no bridge, nothing. Good thing we were wearing our Chacos! Once we crossed the stream here, we were in the home stretch, and going past the waterfalls! I had carried my DSLR & tripod for 3 miles in anticipation and hadn't take it out once. Unfortuantely, the light was not good, so I didn't get any good pictures. It was beautiful though!


We headed back to our site, had some lunch, and was near ready to pass out. We decided to head to the day use area and lay down under the sun for a bit. Andy wanted to go fishing, so that was going to push dinner later, so we stopped at the unofficial camp store and got some ice cream! We got out our kayaks and fishing poles, and headed to the Lower Lake (that was where our campground was too--there are nearly 500 camping sites at this park!). We weren't catching any fish, so we decided to just paddle around. Yay kayaks!

We had a late dinner and headed to bed. Andy woke me up at 4:30am saying a storm was coming in and we should pack some things up. So we did, went to the bathroom (modern facilities just a little walk away! the tent sites were a little too close for comfort for me to use the great outdoors), and put our camp chairs in the car, and put a garbage bag around the stove. On the way back from the bathroom, I realized it was officially my BIRTHDAY!

The storm hit at around 6am and was one of the most intense thunder/lightning/rain storms I have ever been in [it did rival some good storms from my time at summer camp where we turned the picnic tables over to act as barricades from the rain]. I couldn't sleep because the rain was deafening. About two hours later the rain stopped. It drizzled on and off, but not stopping for enough time for me to decide to take my pj pants off. It started pouring again around 10:30am = time for nap. When we woke up around 12noon, the rain had stopped, and most of the campers around us had packed up and left!


We were meeting my parents for dinner at 5:30, but decided we should get ready early and find something to do indoors (like shopping!). We knew one of our favorite Poconos camping stores (Alice's Wonderland) was semi-near the park, somewhat out of the way of where we were going for dinner, but well worth a trip.

Unfortunately Alice's closed 30 minutes after we got there. Still some time to peruse the store. Luckily my parents were arriving early, so we met up with them at the Apple Valley Restaurant in Milford, PA and did some shopping around there. We had a delicious meal, and several hours together to enjoy each other's company. [My dad kept saying that he traveled over 1500 miles to be with me on my birthday] I think they were just happy to see me.

We headed back to our campsite, and the sun was out (finally!), but I wasn't yet ready to take my camera out to the waterfalls for fear another storm would start up. Even though the light was perfect. We had eaten too much food, so Andy and I walked nearly the entire campground, scoping out the RVs, pop-ups, and mansions tents.

across from our tent site

On Monday morning, I woke Andy up early because I needed to get my waterfall pictures. I think it was worth it!

We packed up our stuff, said goodbye to our site and headed home. We had a lot of washing & drying of gear to do. I thought vacations were supposed to be restful? :)

Hope you had a fabulous 4th of July weekend!