We went camping with some of our friends from church, Ryan and Amanda and Matt and Elise. We set off together on Friday afternoon and arrived at the campsite that evening. Of course by the time we got there, it was already dark... I sure do wish we would have had that extra hour of sunlight that you Texans have! Anyways, we got our tents set up using the headlights of our cars, and then thankfully the campsite had a bathroom facilities, so Lucas and I went and filled up our air mattress! Ok, I know you might be thinking that that is not real camping, but believe me I feel better in the morning than I would if I slept on the ground! :-) Once we had everything set up, we sat around and chatted for a while, but we were pretty much beat from a week of work and knew that we wouldn't be able to sleep in much in the morning, so we were off to bed!
Well, sleeping was interesting... with probably about a million tree frogs croaking in sync. (I thought this was really nice and peaceful until we were trying to go to sleep!) And then the threat of rain... But, I finally did fall asleep and then about 4 in the morning I start hearing this sounds... and what could it be but ROOSTERS in the middle of the forest! I was like, you have got to be kidding! So, needless to say, we were up pretty early!
After everyone ate a little camp style breakfast, we were off to do some serious hiking! 6 adults, 3 dogs, lots of water and some peanut butter and jelly sandwiches to hold us over! We had to drive to the trail, and thank goodness that Ryan had a GPS or we might have never made it there! We got there and it was starting to rain... of course. But, we waited it out a little and then were on our way! Thankfully since we were up in the Smokies it was only about 75 degrees, because the humidity after the rain had to have been at 100%! The hike was beautiful though, and the dogs had a GREAT time! We found a waterfall, but not much water, but it was enough for Hailey to get completely wet!
Ryan and Amanda with dog Sandy.
Matt with dog Lexi (you can only see the very tip of her nose!
Funny picture of Hailey... but she was having a blast!
Lucas on top of a beautiful waterfall. Not much water this time of the year, but still a gorgeous spot!
Hailey is thinking really hard about getting in that water......
And there she is. In the water. Her and one of the other dogs that came along, Lexi (a black lab) chased each other through the water for quite a while. It was pretty funny!
So pretty!
She really had fun fetching rocks in the water... apparently this is a game that never gets old!Well the hike was beautiful. We hiked around 7 miles we think... not exactly sure. The mountains were gorgeous! And, there are hundreds of trails to explore in this area. We will definitely be coming back!
The fun of the trip began when we got back to the campsite... We were all exhausted and very dirty, so we were all going to take showers and then come back and relax/take a nap and then cook some hotdogs. Well plans changed when we found a huge yellow jacket next in the ground right behind our truck. We had seen them flying around... but once we found the nest we decided to go get the camp manager and see what we could do. She let us know that this is the season for yellow jackets and that there was not much that she could do... we have noted this for future camping trips! We all moved our cars to another campsite across the way. Well her solution was to pour gasoline in the nest and then spray a TON of bug spray everywhere... I'm not convinced that it did much, but we were determined to not let it spoil our time. So we moved our chairs to another campsite so we could sit around and not 5 minutes later they had followed us over there... Then about 10 minutes later a GIANT tree branch fell to the ground right where our truck and our friends explorer had been sitting. If we wouldn't have moved our cars then it would have been an interesting ride home.... So thank God for the yellow jackets!
Then we decided to build a campfire and while Matt was cutting some wood, he found another yellow jacket nest and was unlucky enough to get stung 6 times... at this time we were all pretty much ready to go home, even though we had already paid for the 2nd night and there were no refunds... so we packed up our stuff and headed home.
And aren't we glad we decided to leave...
The fun of the trip began when we got back to the campsite... We were all exhausted and very dirty, so we were all going to take showers and then come back and relax/take a nap and then cook some hotdogs. Well plans changed when we found a huge yellow jacket next in the ground right behind our truck. We had seen them flying around... but once we found the nest we decided to go get the camp manager and see what we could do. She let us know that this is the season for yellow jackets and that there was not much that she could do... we have noted this for future camping trips! We all moved our cars to another campsite across the way. Well her solution was to pour gasoline in the nest and then spray a TON of bug spray everywhere... I'm not convinced that it did much, but we were determined to not let it spoil our time. So we moved our chairs to another campsite so we could sit around and not 5 minutes later they had followed us over there... Then about 10 minutes later a GIANT tree branch fell to the ground right where our truck and our friends explorer had been sitting. If we wouldn't have moved our cars then it would have been an interesting ride home.... So thank God for the yellow jackets!
Then we decided to build a campfire and while Matt was cutting some wood, he found another yellow jacket nest and was unlucky enough to get stung 6 times... at this time we were all pretty much ready to go home, even though we had already paid for the 2nd night and there were no refunds... so we packed up our stuff and headed home.
And aren't we glad we decided to leave...
This is what we saw as we were leaving to go home... That would not have been fun in a tent!
We made it home and decided to cook hotdogs at our house and make some smores on the grill afterwards! It was quite tasty and a good end to our camping trip! We really did have a great time, and now have many stories to tell!
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