Camping and back to blogging

It's been awhile since the last post (July--yikes!). Here is an attempt to begin blogging, yet again.

This weekend, we went and did some hiking and camping in the North Carolina mountains. We headed out early Saturday morning (Shawn and our neighbor wanted to try for a 6 a.m. departure initially, but I fought back for a 7 a.m. start time--of course, this means we really left around 7:30).

Our first stop (excluding a breakfast stop along the way) was to do some hiking near Boone. We went down the Blue Ridge Parkway for a bit and came to a park that had a number of trails. We took one of our neighbor's favorites, the Boone Fork Trail, which is a 5 mile long hike that goes along a creek (and sometimes through the creek), and has areas where you climb over boulders and down ladders.

All in all, it was a fun hike, and Bella thoroughly enjoyed herself.

Then it was off to set up camp. We found a campground outside of Boone that also had trails and included a pond. We didn't explore the site much, but we spent time sitting around a campfire, eating s'mores, and just having a good time (Did I mention the s'mores?!).

Although we had a great time, Bella did not enjoy the camping portion of the evening. She mostly sat in Shawn's or my lap and jumped at every little sound. I don't think she slept at all that evening. One thing that should be noted about North Carolina camping is how loud the bugs are!

The next morning, we made breakfast over the campfire and headed down the mountain to get set for the week. I love camping, but one thing I do not love is the smell of campfire the next day, so we of course had a lot of laundry to do. And Bella had a lot of sleep to catch up on!