Hell Has Frozen Over - Camping! (part 1)

We've been saying for the last 3+ years (since Si was potty trained) that NOW we can go camping...and each summer, we let the time slip away and didn't get around to it.  Well, NOT this year!  We finally made it happen!  And we had a fantastic time!!

I was a little worried at first - we left Friday afternoon and headed down to Hocking Hills.  Justin had put Mason in charge of researching and finding a place to reserve.  Mason found it, Justin booked it and I was not home so there was no verifying our purchase.

We pulled up to the Hocking Hills Livery and when Justin went in to check-in, he was told that "no, we don't book online"...so we traveled to the Hocking Valley Livery and yes - "you have a reservation but not here...it's at the Family FUN Center!".
Just the mention of the Family FUN Center made me immediately think of some National Lampoon's Family Vacation.  Long story short, we did finally make it to our camping spot, but like most of our vacations - it was off to a rocky start.

The campgrounds were a little rough.  We went in and made pulled around to the right without really driving around the site.  There was a spot that looked decent and we pulled in and started to unpack.  Luckily, Ella had to go to the bathroom so I walked her over to the porta johns.  We explored a little further up the road and discovered that the other side of the grounds were more "campy" - better canopy of trees, bigger sites - definitely cozier feeling.
I texted Justin and Mason and told them to come take a look.  Luckily they hadn't gotten the tent set up yet, and after some debating, we made the move to the new site.

Justin and Mason managed to set up the (borrowed) tent pretty quickly and WOW!
It was like a condo - we had a ton of space and could have added another 4 or 5 people pretty easily!

We spent Friday evening unpacking, hitting the grocery store and settling in. We made hot dogs, baked beans and of course: s'mores!  The kids were pretty wired and we spent the evening around the fire.

Silas lost his tooth that night too - of course!  He was concerned that the Tooth Fairy wouldn't be able to find us at the camp grounds but she managed to do just fine!

It was perfect camping weather - it got down to 52 that night and the fire felt great.  What didn't feel so great was the air mattress that deflated in the middle of the night so that Justin and I were totally on the hard ground - that was sucky.  Silas and Ella got pretty cold too and were curled like little potato bugs when I woke up at 5:30am.  I decided to go ahead and just get up and shortly after, Ella got up too.

Justin, always the Master breakfast maker, soon followed and whipped up a very yummy camp breakfast of eggs, sausage and potatoes. Only the mimosas were missing!

While breakfast was cooking, Ella and I walked the path to the river - it was chilly and quite sandy/muddy - they seem to be doing a lot of construction on the property - but the view was very pretty. The fog looked cool coming up off of the river.

to be continued...