Our Camping Adventure - Part I

The past three days at Dinosaur Valley State Park have been a blast. We hiked, cooked out, slept (sweated) in a tent, swam in a prehistoric watering hold for dinosaurs, explored the river, went on mini-adventures, learned about God's creation and His love for us through little field lessons we did, learned about dinosaurs, cooked solar s'mores, went on nighttime walks with glow bracelets, got a visit from the "camping" tooth fairy, and bonded as a family. The temperatures reached close to 100 degrees, but we somehow survived with no air conditioning. Here are a few of our favorite pictures....the first is of our hike/climb to the watering hole.

We hiked/climbed down to the prehistoric watering hole and viewed some dinosaur tracks. Jonathan got up close and personal with them. You can see the ledge. It drops off to at least 24 feet past that little piece of rock. We came back later and swam in it - it was a very nice break from the heat!

You can see two of the toes rather clearly - the other one is harder to see in the photo.

Richard enjoyed his new outdoor kitchen we just bought him. He was quite the chef!

This was after our little adventure down the river. We walked through the river until we got to the cliffs. The kids had a great time, even though we all stumbled a bit.

Walking in the riverbed.
Swimming at the swimming hole - or actually, sitting on the ledge for a photo. We also made cucumber canoes and had cucumber boat races - I think Jonathan's won - hard to tell since they eventually all flipped over! :-)

S'Mores, please! We made ours this year in a solar oven we made before we went. The kids had a fun time making it, and we had an even tastier time trying it out! It was quite a cute little experiment.

Tent, sweet, tent! Boy, was it hot at night. But, Richard had bought us a little fan, so at least we had air circulating.

Alyssa and her Doodlebug that she found. She played with it for a long time! And, though this looks gross, it was necessary. We resorted to setting a place for the flies during meals so they would eat "their plate" and leave ours alone! The funny part is that it actually worked!