Do you ever have weekends or trips out that just seem to stand out for different reasons as that really awesome, memorable trip? It could be the weather, the company, memorable moments or something else. Well our first weekend of March was one of those weekends!
I arrived at camp on Friday morning and started setting up right away. It took about a half hour to warm up inside. It was chilly out, but a beautiful sunny day. As usual, after hooking up the hydro and putting the slides out, I unloaded all our plastic totes from the truck and put everything away. It’s become a routine now! Once everything was unpacked and put away, I decided it was too beautiful of a day to waste. I went for an hour long hike around the campground.
The first destination on my hike was the back campground – the newest addition to the park which remains closed in the winter. There were animal tracks everywhere (coyote, deer and rabbit) but no human tracks in the snow. The snow and blue sky made for some beautiful scenery!
One really great thing about our campsite is it’s close proximity to many trails! I love that I can just walk off our campsite and be on a trail in about 5 or 10 minutes. So, after my first walk about, I stopped back at the fiver to pick up a water bottle and headed out for part two of my hike – to the lookout on the Boardwalk Trail! In the last photo, if you look closely, you can see our fiver tucked away in the woods at our campsite. That’s how private our site is!
We decided not to use our fresh water system this weekend as the temperatures had been colder all week and we were really only at camp for a short weekend. Sometimes it’s just not worth the de-winterizing and re-winterizing process. Besides, we now know that there is at least one place where freeze ups occur that affect us using our pump. We know that we can take down the wall in the pass thru and put our small electric heater in there and this fixes that issue, but for the sake of one short weekend, not worth it to us.
So Friday ended with a campfire once Dave got to camp. It was cold, but there was no wind, so it didn’t seem too bad. We were on a mission to burn as much wood as possible this weekend. Since we’re nearing the end of our winter program, we want to make sure we don’t have wood to bring home.
Saturday was a glorious day – I can’t explain it, but it just was one of those days that carried on into a wonderful night. We woke up leisurely and enjoyed coffee and a super breakfast. Dave started a fire late morning and burned all day and into the night. The sky was clear and with absolutely no wind coupled with the sunshine, it felt a lot warmer than it has been. Eventually it did cloud over but cleared out again later in the day. I wondered around the woods behind our site and found a couple really cool trees!
The woods behind our site can be pretty muddy and wet to navigate in the Spring, so I wanted to make sure I took some time this weekend to wander around again before things thawed. I broke through ice in a couple places but my boots are water proof thankfully! This swampy area is home to noisy peepers in the Spring. I look forward to hearing their song again soon! Next on the agenda was a walkabout with Dave. I took him to the lookout tower as he’d never visited before. The clouds had rolled in by this time, but it was still nice outside.
The rest of the day was spent enjoying our campfire!
We spoiled our supper, or at least our campfire snack became our supper! This trip I brought some thick sliced bacon to make these campfire treats! Yum!
We couldn’t believe how many birds we had at our site over the weekend. We were likely the only ones with feeders out , which hardly ever happens! We had two pair of bluejays, two pair of cardinals, many different chickadees and sparrows and three woodpeckers at a time hanging off our one suet feeder. By Saturday morning, three of the four feeders were empty, so I refilled them. By Sunday morning, two were empty again and my bird seed bell was ate up too! Part of the bird seed did go to the various squirrels as well. We had black ones, brown ones, red ones and one with a black body and brown tail! We also had one particularly aggressive female cardinal that kept staring at her reflection in the truck mirror then attacking it. She also attacked her reflection in our bedroom window. We tried to scare her away, but she kept coming back. Fortunately her attacks didn’t result in her knocking herself out!
Saturday was an amazing day! The hikes, the campfire, the amazing company of my wonderful spouse, the wonderful weather, special campfire treats and the glorious sunset that turned into a wonderful night around the campfire. We didn’t hear the coyotes, but the sky cleared out around dusk and the night sky was incredible. So many stars and it was so quiet at the campground. It was magical! As I mentioned earlier, sometimes it’s a combination of many things that just make one trip, one day an amazing memory!
This weekend definitely went by too quick. I would have loved to have hung around later on Sunday, but I was scheduled at work for a night shift. Our next weekend out, I’m hoping to linger on Sunday as we really don’t have anywhere to be until work on Monday morning.
HAPPY WINTER CAMPING –Â If you’re not doing it, you’re missing an amazing experience!
Sue and Daves RV Adventures 