Family Camping Trip, Part II

I realize that I'm about to contradict myself from my previous claim that our only camping activities consist of eating, sleeping, and reading. While it is true that we do mostly sleep and eat, and occasionally read, on this particular trip we were lucky enough to be staying in a state park that was home to an easy 3.5 mile hiking trail. 

Being the bossy mother hen that I am, I broke the eat-sleep-read cycle and I rallied the troops out into the woods. 

 

Josh insisted on carrying Lola on his back.

He claimed it would be a good work out.

At different points during the hike, there were informational signs about the area. Several of them mentioned animals native to the area, like mountain lions, bobcats, and snakes. Since my niece had already seen two snakes near the campground, I was a little nervous about running into more natives. 

Thankfully, the only thing we saw was a lizard, which my nephew plucked off a log like Bear Grylls! He flipped it over, you can see that the lizard has a blue belly.

Other informational signs described the native plants, including one that went into extensive details about poison oak. I was particularly thankful for that sign because directly next to the sign was a beautiful bush full of red berries that I thought looked delicious. The sign indicated that poison oak bushes had red berries and included an illustration that was strikingly identical to the berries that I wanted to snack on.

Halfway through our trip, we ran into a family hiking the opposite direction as us, and the father said, "By the way, there are some berry bushes ahead, but I don't recommend eating them because they are very sour."

Can you get poison oak in your mouth? I'm thankful to say, I don't know.


However, speaking of awkward moments, Andrea and I took an awkward family photo. For whatever reason, she is grabbing my waistband, and I about to punch her in the chest.

Realizing how awkward we were, our subsequent photos proved to be futile as we couldn't stop laughing.

When we got back to camp, Lola and Josh were a sweaty mess. Lola was less than thrilled about the situation, but I was thankful for the coin-operated lukewarm showers available to us.