4th of July Camping Trip

We went camping for our 4th of July weekend. We left the house just after noon on Thursday. (that was a miracle in an of itself!) We went up to the Meadow Ridge campground. It is right by the Rampart Reservoir. We set up camp and got down to the business of having fun! We were joined by 3 other families...the Leftwich's, Birrell's and the Zelasko's

(a total of 22 of us...the majority being teenagers)

Unfortunately, it rained the first night...it was a little cool out, and our tent had a little "leaking" problem. We got dripped on ALL night! We decided that SOMETHING had to be done!!

On Friday, we went to Guffey's Gorge for some cliff diving... (SCARY for mom!) The scenery was beautiful!Wayne climbed up to get the pictures from on top...
Here is Chase & Austin going for a back flip.Here is Ryan getting ready to jump...he did MANY jumps!Here is Jessica being "coaxed" down in order to jump. After much coercion, Chase talked her into jumping WITH him...he grabbed her hand and made her GO!Here is Wayne doing his 2nd jump! (what a brave man!)Later that afternoon....the clouds came in. Yep, it rained the rest of the evening! Good thing we stopped at Walmart and purchased a new tent!

Saturday morning dawned bright and clear. Ryan went with Chase, Austin and Steve (a parent) around the lake on mountain bikes. That would be a 14 mile ride. Poor Ryan missed the last turn off and went a little farther than necessary, but he did make it back to camp safely.

Wayne headed out with Chipper, Chris, Jessica, Tiffany, Nate, Jeremy, Scott, JD and Brenda (a parent). After going part way, Brenda, Nate & Tiffany headed back. The others went on. Wayne talked them into going all the way around the lake. Well...the weather did NOT cooperate with them. They had to deal with marble sized hail. They found a cave to wait out the hail...they noticed that there were some rather large feces in there. The story goes that someone threw a rock down the hole to see how deep it was...they heard a growl. Then Chipper started to growl. We don't know exactly what was in that cave, but they all decided not to wait around to see!!! They found another cave that didn't seem as dangerous. When the hail stopped, they continued hiking in the rain. It wasn't any ordinary rain...it was a DOWN POUR!!! At camp, we were experiencing MAJOR flooding. The tents were so saturated with water that we were all leaking at the seams. Even our new tent was leaking. Our camp area became a "lake".

When everyone arrived home WET...everyone piled into the Leftwich's 5th wheel...thank goodness they had a warm HUMID place to get warm.

Here are a few pictures of the after effects of the rain that day during a break in the rain!

The break didn't last long. The rain continued. Everyone was WET. All of our clothes were wet! Chipper was WET. After dinner, we decided to go home for the night so that we could get Chipper dry, and get DRY clothes.

We returned early Sunday morning to yummy crepes! Since it was a beautiful day, we all went for a little walk...

Oh and here is the BIRTHDAY BOY! HAPPY BIRTHDAY WAYNE!

Once again...the clouds came and it started to rain. The kids watch a movie in the trailer and then ended up playing games at the camp table. Here they are playing "slap jack"...I understand there were many bruised hands afterwards.

We also had some "friendly" arm wrestling contests.

The birthday boy got a special dutch oven dinner...

Then for Dessert...we had a dutch oven Mississippi Mud Cake

Jessica happened to not be present when we sang "Happy Birthday" to Wayne....so she did a solo and sang to her daddy!Later that night, Brenda brought out the "glow sticks". The kids all played "capture the flag" in the dark. Since quiet time is at 10:00, they played their last game in "silence". Ok, so they weren't that quiet. They sat around the fire and talked and laughed until after 12:30. Yep...that was in the AM! We got up Monday morning, had breakfast and loaded up!

We are still attempting to dry all the tents out in the back yard...we will then SEAL the seams. Hopefully the next time we camp, we will BEAT the rain!!