The Last Camping Hoorah for 2008

We took our pop-up up to the Dunes State Park in Chesterton for one last camping trip for this year. We had a lot of fun!

One of the things I was excited about was cooking. I hadn't made any new camping recipes for a few years and I figured since we'll probably be camping a lot more now I should try to mix it up and not only make our favorite pizza pudgie pies. My friend Dawn gave me this recipe for a great breakfast and it really turned out good! You take a sausage patty and put it on tin foil. You make a nest of hash browns on top of it then crack an egg in the middle of the nest. You top it with some salt and pepper and then fold it up into a pouch and heat it on the fire for about 30 minutes. I was a little scared of the eggs not being done enough for me but they were really good!!! Check it out!

Before

After

The park there was all redone last year so it is really nice. They also had a lot of organized activities at the nature center. We took the kids on a "swamp adventure" and they got to use nets to find different living things in the marshy area. One fun fact we learned was that the Dunes is the #3 park for having the most number of different plants and animals in the US. The other two are the Grand Canyon and the Smokey Mountain National parks. Hard to believe that's right by our house!! Anyway, check out some of the pictures from the swamp adventure below.

Ready to go!

Hiking the trail

Let's see what we can find!

We only found snails but they were still neat because they would start coming out of their shells!

Emma even touched a snake!!

Sunday morning we decided to try a long hike with the kids just to see how they would do. We were amazed at how well they did. Jackson of course got a bit tired during the second leg of the hike where it was all sand but we expected that. I was tired and he's only three! One of the things that we enjoyed the most was the beautiful views. At one point Jack said he thought if someone blind folded him and dropped in in that spot he would've sworn he was in Tennessee. It really was beautiful.

Scenery

Checking out where to go next

That's a long way down!!!

Yay!! We made it to the beach! (some of these we from driving over to the beach the day before. Notice the wardrobe change)

Going up the dunes wasn't so much fun but coming down was!!

Jack left Emma in the dust :(

Jackson's body went a little faster than his feet!

The parking lot had a huge restricted area where it caved in from the lake rising from all the rain. It was unbelieveable!

We are definitely glad that we bought the pop-up. It was such a fun cheap way to get away for the weekend. We're already trying to check out places to go next summer!