Saturday, August 29, 2009

Lily's First Camping Trip!


Our Campsite

Steph getting ready to build a fire

Perfect!


Two weeks ago we took Lily on her first camping trip! We meant to take her many times before this, but somehow it just never worked out. So, on a Monday we headed out with our friends Steph and Ryan to have a two day/one night staff team camping trip.
Seven years ago (just before we got engaged) Joe and I visited this place (First Dedumpskaneg Lake) and I absolutly fell in love with it. Ever since I have wanted to go back and camp.
It was well worth the wait! You can only access the few camping sites by boat, so we loaded up our canoe (yes, we managed to fit all 3 of us, our dog, and our gear in one canoe) and headed out with our friends. It was really fun to canoe camp even if I wasn't able to bring my nice camera (we thought it was safer to only bring my old digital in the canoe). And despite the fact that we had to wait a bit for a site to become available we may have found one of the best camping sites ever! We had our own private sand beach looking out onto the lake. The lake itself had a gradual entry and Lily literally played in the water and sand for hours at a time. It is absolutly the perfect place for a toddler that loves water, sand, and the outdoors. We spent the first day just soaking it all in, enjoying the sun, water, and beach.
That is until dusk came. And with it thousands of mosquitos. It was so bad that we literally couldn't leave the beach. If you even started to walk into the woods you would be swarmed with mosquitos- and they would follow you in a little cloud all the way back to the beach (where they would proceed to attack everyone else too). Not even the fire and smoke seemed to slow them down. Thankfully we brought along our huge L.L Bean family tent- so while Lily was asleep inside the tent cabin Steph, Ryan, Joe, and I were still able to talk and enjoy each other's company in the comfort of our screened in tent porch!
Lily did great on this trip. She fell asleep in the tent (even though we were all right next to her talking) and slept great waking up at her normal time in the morning. She tolerated the bugs better than we did (the poor little thing was covered in mosquito bites- with at least 5 or 6 just on her face)! The mosquiots did clear out long enough in the morning for our staff team to get a little work done (while Lily played with her toy frogs in the sand). Even so we decided to pack it up a big early (we were pretty sick of the bugs) and head back. We've decided that this would be the perfect place to camp in September (after a patch of cold weather has killed the mosquitos, but while it's still warm enough to enjoy the water)! Overall though a pretty good first camping trip for out little girl.

2 comments:

Sarah said...

Isn't this a great place! We love camping there. When you enter the lake, we camped at the site on the left. I think that one's the best! Did you visit the caves?

Angie Cousins said...

Sarah- no, I didn't even know there were caves! Now we have another reason to go back! Maybe the caves would have had less mosquitos!:) We were at the furthest site on the right- loved it! And oh yeah, I know I drastically spelled the name of the lake wrong, but I was too lazy to look it up!:)