Camping Again!

Just shy of the 3 year mark from our last post, which documents our camping adventure in the Adirondacks, it seems fitting that my renewed attention to this much neglegted blog be about another camping trip. Chet and I are now living in central Missouri and had to explore our new backyard: the Ozarks. With some of the largest springs in the country found here in Missouri, we had to check them out. 

This is a bunk buddy we discovered when we were breaking camp. I think this is what you get when you mix a tarantula and a wolf spider...yikes!

 On the trail to Greer Spring

 This is the first outlet of Greer Spring. It flows out from this cave- cool!

Chet had to snorkel to see what was in it.

Down the trail a bit is another boil to the spring. This was huge! (of course Chet wasted no time in exploring this one too)

This is the river at Greer Spring

Our next stop was Big Spring. (No swimming or wading allowed in this one. Bummer) 

We agreed that it looks like a pirate cove, only with colder water. 

We saw this cool guy on the trail. 

This is at Big Spring before it meets the Current River. 

It was a really fun and gorgeous camping trip! All this adventuring made baby want to make an early debut, so now I have Dr's orders to stay off my feet for the next few weeks. I guess that means I'll be blogging more regularly!

Happy 4th of July

First camping trip of the year, and we're off to a great start. We packed up the car and hit the road Thursday evening ready for our adventure. On the first night we camped with the Hansens next to the Hudson River in the Adirondacks.

After breakfast and a quick dip in the river we made our way up to Blue Mountain Lake. We got our canoes and lashed them together for better safety, and set our stern toward Osprey Island.

We were the only ones camping on this island, which was beautiful. There was this cute little picnic area around the bend from camp, that had a sandy beach where we played around for a bit, then got warm by the fire.

We paddled down to our next door island and hiked around a bit. There were these huge red mushrooms on a fallen tree. Chet thought about eating one. Don't do it!!!


He was trying to see how deep the water was off this rock, but slipped in. Good thing he saved our camera from drowning.

Back to our home base, we met up with the Scarboroughs.

Time to get down to survival business. The men started the fire and pumped water while the ladies prepared stew and biscuits.

A good meal, an excellent dessert of cherry cobbler, and a good nights sleep on moss covered ground is enough to brighten anyone's day, even if it was a little damp out. We all piled in the motorboat and struck out for West Bay so we could hike up to Castle Rock. We had to open the umbrellas to keep the spray off our faces.

The rocks were really fun to explore on the way up the hike. At the top we felt like we were on top of the world!

Osprey Island served us well. We packed up to head home, but we had to stop at a couple more islands, including Rock Island. This place has a 10' cliff to jump off of into the lake.

On the last leg of our trip we were going with the wind, so we spread our sails...er poncho which pulled us right into the bay.

It was an amazing way to spend Independence day weekend: camping with good friends in the gorgeous country.

Weather Is A Funny Thing

This past weekend held the nicest weather we've seen yet in 2009. The weekend following our snow storm that left drifts big enough to carve a cave, we found ourselves with weather nice enough to bike over to the park to picnic and play.

After our fun in the park, we had a ward activity complete with snacks a talent show and a Family Feud scripture game.

Team Rosario rocked everyone's socks off!!

Those "primary level" Bible questions started getting too hard for our teams so we ended with the audience quizzing us. Chet and I had fun putting together this mini comedy ventriloquist act for our talent. We had a lot of fun!

VIDEO - "Meet Eleanor"