Camping in Brown County

Sorry I've not blogged for a while. I will try and catch up. We've been busy having as much fun as we can before school starts, and also have new family nearby to keep us busy. My sister-in-law arrived in mid-July to join her (lovesick) husband. They have an apartment upstairs in our building and have begun to settle in quite nicely.



We took a weekend and went camping with my parents at Brown County State Park. It happened to be a very hot weekend, but the nights were comfortable at least. We did not arrive until sundown Friday night. But our treat was seeing a mama deer and her twins right at dusk as we drove into the park! This picture only shows one of the fawn, but there was another one on the other side of the road.



Fortunately, we were able to get our tents up in the dark (with the help of good lanterns and some headlights). The next day we had a great breakfast, then spent the afternoon exploring the park, appreciating the truck's air conditioning to get from place to place.

In a neat section of woods



Gabriela, posing



We had another good dinner over the grill that night, then headed to the fire watch tower to try and get a glimpse of the sunset. Sadly, it was not open at the top, and the sun was going behind the trees. At least we got a good climb in though. I had brought along a Mason jar to collect lightning bugs, but there weren't any around that night. So, Gabriela collected some small rocks and leaves and found an inch worm we took home (it lasted for two weeks with us, then we put him back in the "wild")



My Dad at the top of the fire watch tower



Sunday we got up early enough that Dad, Gabriela and I headed out for a nice hike. My mom's hip is not doing so well, so we did not do much hiking the previous day, plus it was super hot. So I was determined to do some hiking before we left. Gabriela did a great job, and did not complain after 2 hours even. We went a little longer than expected due to mis-reading the trail map, but it was good to spend that time in the woods and point out small neat nature things to Gabriela. We saw lots of toad stools of all sorts of colors, and lots and lots of tiny baby toads! They were everywhere, so I imagine they had all just been born. They would hop along the edge of the path. They were smaller than my index fingernail. There were lots of chipmunks too, which we would see running, but way too fast to get a picture of them. We also discovered at the end of the hike just what "rugged" meant... it meant a steep uphill climb. It was probably better at the end of the hike as we were going up; going down would have been scarier. It was another good workout and just peaceful to be in the woods for a bit. I love sharing my love of nature with my daughter too. It was great being with my Daddy too.

For more pictures, click here and here