As I said from the previous post, our first camping trip with McKinley & the camper was a success, so we thought we'd quite possibly press our luck and go camping twice more (2 weekends in a row). The first was a ward campout. We met at the site of our stake's girls' camp - Camp Joseph in Rye , CO. In the morning we all participated in a big service project to help improve the camp. For some reason (we still don't know why) Nate was unofficially put in charge of arranging most of this ward camp out, so he was a little relieved when it was over. It was a fun time as well though. Unfortunately this was the only picture we got of that campout b/c our camera battery died right after...oops :)
Our next adventure was at Jellystone Park in Estes Park on Labor day weekend. This was actually where we were trying to go on our first camping trip, but it was totally booked. So we reserved a spot weeks in advance this time. We were told to watch out for bears....well we sure found them and discovered they were quite cute and photogenic :)
Our kids didn't know who Yogi bear was (guess he was of generations past) before this trip. Now, Yogi, Cindy and Boo Boo bear are their best pals. They even have tatoos of them on their arms (which they apparently wore proudly on picture day at school -nice!)
This camp ground was really fun in the fact that they had activites going on almost all the time. Things like candy bar bingo, karaoke night, big dance (all of which we participated in), crafts and horseshoe & mini-golf tournaments. They had a mini-golf course, arcade, 2 playgrounds and a pool as well. The down-side is that the lay-out of the camp ground was disappointing. There was very little shade/ trees and the sites were all really clsoe together. There was also only one bathroom for the whole camp ground (2 stalls) and it was a MAJOR hike down and uphill to get to it. We might normally get more "creative" in finding places to go to the bathroom, but being so close to our neighbors with hardly any trees made that plan impossible. The only place you could get water was also at the bathroom, there were no other water spickets any where. These things were a bit frustrating, but overall we had a good time!
Jellystone is just a couple minutes outside of Estes Park, so we went into town a few times and had a lot of fun. We went out to eat a couple times, walked around the arts & crafts festival, and drove around the Stanley Hotel (famous from "The Shining"). While we were doing that we ran into quite the gang....
This fella had no problem strolling in front of our car and others. Guess he knows who's boss :) It was pretty neat b/c we got within a foot of him. There were atleast 10 or more females with him. It was funny b/c the home owners were just doing their gardening or whatever, not really paying any attnetion to the "visitors", obviously very used to it.
Anyway, the kids were lovin' it and we're tight now!
Estes has such a lovely riverwalk through the downtown with litte waterfalls everywhere.
In one of the shop windows we encountered this triceratops fossil that was supposedly discovered in Colorado. It was blowing Colton & Tyler's minds!
Later we stopped and had a little picnic on the river's edge - so lovely.
Kinners enjoying herself - like usual :)
Taking another little break by the river and playground the kids all enjoyed...
...even McKinley
We found some great climbing trees (and yummy sticks, I guess)
"What? I'm not posing!"
McKinley taking a little rest on her napping daddy
Tyler got pretty high shimmying his way up
We also came across a unique little group of shops in the shape of an ark.
Now whenver we were actually at our camp site, Colton's favorite (and maybe ONLY) passtime was quite literally showering himself with fistfuls of dirt. He'd lay down and make dirt angels, even cake his face with as much dirt as possible to make some pretty neat masks. At one point he thought it'd be fun to have a big dirt fight ...... not so fun for anyone else!!
Luckily, we were able to rinse offin the pool a couple times. It was McKinley's first time in the pool and she was loving it. We also bought this float suit for Colton so that he wouldn't totally drown if we couldn't have our hands on him the whole time. He was NOT liking the idea at first and had a little stand-off, but then a few minutes later, he was like a little water baby having a ball. He loved jumping in over and over and having daddy propel him far in the air. It worked out just great!
It was nice the pool was heated.
We took a nice hike on the mountain
We also made time to take a ride on the giant wavy slide in town. Nate and I found this a few years ago with my parents, when Lexi was just a little toddler and thought it was quite fun for $1. This time Tyler, Lexi and I raced.... you can see Tyler won that heat.
Then Nate took Colton
On our trip home, we stopped at Palmer Lake to have another picnic and the kids played on yet another playground. We've never actually spent anytime here before and we've lived so close.
Overall, there was a lot of adventure, dirt, work, tiredness and fun! We decided 3 nights camping is plenty long enough (especially if some of those nights are frigid). Also we learned that an infant isn't the hard one when you're camping.....it's definitely the Colton-ator!! We had a good time, but we might just take a break from camping for while. Us old people need to rest :)
