Our family and some friends (Chad and Heather) set out on our first camping adventure last weekend (May 9-11). We traveled a whole 5 miles down the road to a Jackrabbit campground located on Lake Chatuge. We set up our Pop-Up campers and all the other things that must be done to ensure a good camping trip, canopies, cover picnic tables, make beds in the camper, set up fishing poles, unload fire wood (make sure we have marshmallows), unload bikes, and lots of other things that needed to be done. We had a perfect camping spot with our camper on one spot and our friends camper in the next spot, with a large open grass area and picnic table between. We also had a perfect place for the kids to go down to the lake and fish or play safely in the water. They loved it.
On Friday night we grilled hamburgers and hotdogs. We fished in the lake. We found that Katy is an excellent "caster". She could cast her fishing line a good 30 feet or more out into the water. We were all very proud of her, especially Papaw Burch. Mason did pretty good too, and Adam enjoyed sitting on the rocks and watching. Maggie and Nathan (freinds) enjoyed fishing too. Then we enjoyed roasting marshmallows around the campfire.
It stormed a little that night, so we got up to a wet, muddy mess. However, the sun was shining, we wiped down the camp and got started on breakfast (pancakes and bacon). The rest of the day was spent playing and riding bikes with some other kids who were camping behind us. Maggie and Katy also had to leave for a birthday party in the middle of the afternoon.
As it turned out, the weatherman was calling for severe thunderstorms, hail, tornadoes, wind.... for Saturday night and Sunday. So, we decided to stay at camp through dinner, then we packed up and came home (the advantage of camping close by). We gilled Deer ham and shoulder and invited Dad, Aunt Mary, Aunt Tommie, Jo, and Ann up for dinner. We ate like kings, enjoyed the campfire, then packed up around 9:00pm and came on home. It did storm that night, but not terribly bad, still it was good we came on home, the wind was horrific on Sunday.
All -in-all we had a great time and are looking forward to going camping again this comeming weekend. Looks like we will be heading out Friday, we are camping with 2 sets of friends, we will have a good time, no doubt.
