Roughin' It

Due to some intense peer pressure (you know who you are!), my family decided to go camping last weekend.

All 6 of us.

Plus 1 tall, hungry nephew.

In a tent.

With the dog!

In case you haven't caught on, I wasn't exactly thrilled about the prospect of becoming one with nature.  I'm not what you'd call a nature lover.  But with 4 boys and only 2 girls, we were bound to lose a battle sometime.  So I put on my game-face and prepared myself for 3 days of The Great Outdoors.  

I was prepared for lots of this...

and of course for this...

and I was even ready for this...

But unfortunately, I had not quite prepared myself for this...

These were "the facilities" of our campground. I use the word campground loosely. They provided the ground and we paid to camp there. What you can't see in this photo is the teeny, tiny little hose hooked up to the black barrels that held the water. (The shower was described as "solar heated" by the "campground". I'm running out of quotes.) That teeny tiny hose let out a teeny tiny trickle of water for us to shower with. And if you tried real hard you could see right thru those boards and figure out who was showering. I took my shower right as it was getting dark! I spared you the pleasure of having to look at the lovely port-a-potty that sat right beside the shower.

You can imagine my excitement when I realized that was my fate for the next 3 days.

But then we had a few moments like this...

and these...

and this one was really nice.

And even a non-nature-lover like myself was very impressed with God's creation at Hocking Hills.

The waterfalls were gorgeous and there were huge caves everywhere. The kids found a cave way back in the trail with the waterfall running over and decided to do what kids do....jump in!

You can see in the above photos Rebel goes in first (man he needs a tan!) then Wild Child runs thru...then he falls...then Overachiever laughs his head off when his brother fell in the water! It was kinda funny.

The hiking was great and of course the kids were in Heaven...there were hills to climb, rocks to throw, water to jump in and neat things to walk on.

Old Man's Cave was so cool. I still can't comprehend how they got all those steps built in the middle of nowhere!

(I have no idea what they're looking at!)

So overall, I survived my first venture roughin' it and will even admit to enjoying myself a bit. Basically, as long as this crew was happy...

...then this one is happy. (yes, that's happiness written all over my smoke filled face!)