Wilderness Adventures

Well, our big trip into the wild is over. The laptop I borrowed didn’t have an antenna or a wireless card, so I couldn’t make any real-time updates, sorry to disappoint my thousands of loyal readers.

Kudos to the folks at Brookside. They run a nice little operation. It’s not a heavily wooded place, but there was plenty of stuff for the kids to do. They had a nice pool, a couple of mini-playgrounds including a thirty foot long replica of a wooden pirate ship. We split most of our time between the pool and the small brook than runs through the back of the campground.

If we had been staying for more than a weekend we probably would have made the trip over to the HiWay Drive-In Theater over about halfway between Catskill and Coxsackie. Debbie and I love the Drive-In and the kids are about old enough to give it a shot. They had a great compromise at Brookside, though. They show a kids movie on a big inflatable screen in the area that just happened to be next to our cabin. Big win for us, Debbie and I could stay by our campfire while the girls got to watch Ice Age 2. They felt very adult doing that by themselves (and we could still see them).

We left a bit early today, stopped off to laugh at the hippies in Woodstock and were home by mid-afternoon. All in all a great weekend.

The Great Outdoors

This weekend is our first family camping trip. I have taken Megan camping twice before; we had a nice tradition of going with my cousin and his two sons. Unfortunately our weekends are both so full with birthday parties, T-Ball and soccer we haven’t been able to coordinate another trip.

Since Devon is now three (as she would say “Three and a half” accompanied by a look that implies I only have four functioning brain cells), she is ready for her first trip to the woods.

Well, not exactly woods. While the Brookside Campground has plenty of trees, it also has indoor plumbing. At Debbie’s insistence we are renting a trailer for the weekend. No need to share one of those communal bathrooms that bring back memories of college dorms. Megan and especially Devon are most definitely City kids. They are convinced that bears, and maybe lions and pumas may be lurking behind every tree. I’m a little more concerned with ticks and poison ivy. We’ll all smell like we swam in an “OFF” lake all weekend.

Still, I love sitting in front of a campfire toasting marshmallows. Debbie enjoys throwing them into the fire and watching them burn. (I've actually made my own marshmallows, quite deliciousand easy to do with a stand mixer). The campfire is the best part of these trips, global wrming be damned. Even without fire, there’s a lot to do in the area. If I can get our Wi-Fi connection to work, maybe I’ll make some trip-in-progress posts.