Harrod Family Vacation : Part 1 Camping

This past week my brother John and his wife Liz and my adorable nephew Ethan came into town from Delaware. We started the week off camping in Arkansas in cabins in the beautiful Ouachita mountains. I made a mistake the night before and watched Furry Vengeance with my kids. After watching it they decided they did NOT want to go camping with bears in the Forest. I had to assure them there were NO bears and then realized we were camping in bear country, oops! Oh well, we didn't see any so to them I seemed to be telling the truth.

The older cousins all packed in for our ride to Arkansas

The first morning, we got up and started enjoying the forest and the amazing weather!!

They had about 9 dogs roaming their camp, we had a few that stuck around us the whole time. I was very OK with that. They kept all the unwanted animals away from our camp! Asher is normally pretty leery of dogs but he was in love with these ones.

The cousins Ethan, Azlyn and Asher

Time for our morning ritual of dutch oven donuts!!

Grandpy getting some love from Asher

We rented a 4 wheeler for a few hours b/c the terrain was awesome and we knew the kids would love riding around the camp. They all had a blast. After they had all taken rides around, Asher wanted to keep riding with Grandpy and the rest of us jumped in the back of the truck and drove around the area exploring.

I thought this sign was pretty cool, we had seen it as we drove in the evening before and when it says crooked and steep it means it! It was a gorgeous drive though.

After Breakfast we packed up and drove to a nearby waterfall where we planned to hike for a while but quickly found LOTS of poison ivy lining the trails and we probably only made it 1/8 of a mile b/c our kids little hands couldn't help but touch everything they saw. But we did have lots of fun in that little distance.

We walked down to the water and found a crayfish (that Uncle John is showing them). Azlyn is quit brave and she held it for a while along with a tadpole we found too. The kids stayed down there so long throwing rocks. It's amazing how amusing that can be.

You may notice Troy is not in any pictures with the me and the kids:( He had to stay home b/c he had a retreat that he was at with all the high schoolers from his school. He had fun but we sure did miss him!! Also Bubbi (my little brother Justin) was not able to make it with us either, what bummers!!

Muscles!!

Back at camp we started the fire for our dutch oven dinner that was about to come, yummm... and yes you will get a picture of the amazing-ness of our stew, SO good:)

This picture doesn't do justice as to how stinkin' good this was!!

And the night isn't complete without some s'mores!

Uncle John read many stories to the kiddos through out the weekend. I loved seeing them all snuggled up around him:)

Our turtle, another one of our nature finds. My dad actually saw this on the road while driving and stopped to pick it up so the kids could play with it at our picnic.

These few pictures are actually from earlier in the day, but after hiking at the falls we found the perfect water hole and let the kids go swimming. I wished I had packed my swimsuit that day because the water felt so good and I would have loved to take the kids further in the water.

This is up stream from the water hole. This area was seriously amazing.

Our second night there we did a simpler meal and went for the decadent dessert in the dutch oven. As we waited for it to cook the kids made s'mores with their super sized marshmallows Aunt Lizzie had found at the store.

We took a look up in the sky that night and realized this was probably one of the clearest night skies we could see since there are NO lights within miles. We had too many trees around us so we all piled up in the back of the truck and drove to a remote area and layed out and watched the stars. We had the clearest view of the Milky Way and as we were out there saw some lightning bug larvae that were walking around the ground glowing. Kids loved the glow bugs, they couldn't fly away! Then back to camp for...

Peach Cobbler and Blue Bell homemade vanilla, now that's good stuff!

That night was pretty chilly in the cabin, it was mid 60's when I woke up so I had Adelaide snuggle with me and then when Azlyn woke up she went and snuggled with Adelaide. What sweet sisters:)

Next post will continue our trip into Hot Springs and back home. This trip was so much fun. It's great because when you all get together you want to really get some quality time together and camping makes that happen. No reception at all on our phones, no tv's, it was so great! At one point it was just Adelaide and I snuggled up outside and it was one of the most peaceful moments, listening to the crickets and hearing and watching the tall pines swish back and forth. We are already planning our next camping trip for the fall!