Camping at Crooked Lake

The weekend of May 30 we joined the Ruesch's on a fun camping adventure. It was pretty interesting to actually get all our stuff out and do the whole camping thing. This is Myka peeping out of the tent. She did great and loved following her sister's around everywhere. She was so tired by the time we got around to putting her to bed, she begged to get in the port-a-crib, asked for her pacifier and blanket, and was asleep while the rest of us were tromping around the tent.We were really close to the lake with this fun dock. The girls loved playing on it, except Myka was pretty scared because it moved and she could see the water through the cracks. They also like playing in the water (a little too much) at the little beach area next to it. During our stay, we heard from some other campers of a couple turtles that had been hanging around and went to check it out.There was one by the road buried down under some bushes and then this one just up the hill from the road. I am sure you can't tell from the size of the picture but it is a quite large snapping turtle that has dug its nest and is laying its eggs while Nora and Rachel watch.Daddy was too busy cleaning up to come check out the turtles with us so Myka decided to go show him it a little later. Well for some reason they couldn't find the turtle but Daddy caught her this cute frog and she was very proud of it. She loved showing it to all her sisters and friends and then was very nice to let it go on the dock and watch it hop back into the pond. On Saturday morning after we got mostly packed up, we decided to check out one of the trails and go for a hike. It was really pretty and green everywhere. The girls were really good hikers but had a little competition issue about who was going to be the leader. We liked this cool vine that hung across the trail. I think we decided it was a Virginia Creeper. This is Nora after letting her hang there too long while we dug the camera out and got it ready:-).We saw on the map that the trail we were following had an "overlook" only 1/2 a mile away and decided that would be our turning around point. Daniel of course got pretty excited about and "overlook", we haven't been able to look over the land in quite some time now. We didn't even notice the "overlook" as we passed it and kept on walking. We finally decided that we must have passed it and decided to turn around anyways. On the way back we did notice hiking up a small hill and then there was a bench at the top. We concluded that this must be the "overlook" and decided that they need to write (seasonal) under the overlook on the map since with the trees all green you really couldn't see anything. Guess we will have to try it out on cross country skis this winter. (ha, ha yeah right) Daniel also noticed that the "overlook" seemed to be right over the campground, so he decided to take the girls on an adventure through the woods instead of taking the trail home. He was right, of course, they were there in less than 3 minutes and had us wonderfully made sanwiches when we got there. I also didn't mention that just as we were getting into s'more making it started to sprinkle. We took it pretty seriously, since there were some severe weather warnings for the area, and tried to get everything put away and the kids in the tent quickly. It was coming down steadily by the time we got everyone inside and we got to go to bed listening to the thunder and watching the lightening. We were lucky and didn't get too wet, just the edges of our bags and pillows. It rained for about 3 hours; I kind of wish it had rained longer and harder. I have turned into such a light sleeper; with all the campground noise it was pretty hard for me to fall asleep. But that is O.K. I didn't actually expect to get much sleep in a tent. All in all we had a great time, minus the nasty mosquitos and the rain and it would have been perfect.