Camping at Deer Lake

In April we bought a 1986 tent trailer and we finally got to use it this past weekend. We went camping with our RayGin friends(yes we have other friends too:-) So we headed up to Deer Lake near Harrison Lake on Friday. Probably the first thing we noticed when we arrived was the large amount of mosquitoes, but the bug spray was inside the trailer! With is being our first time actually using the trailer in a camping situation, it took a little longer than it normally to set up, but we eventually got it up properly. Meanwhile we all got our share of bites, unfortunately for Kyle he got a number of them right around his eyes. Once we were all set up the kids wanted to go to the lake and try their hand at 'fishing'.
Here is Kyle at the lake after eating some cherries.

We know Shelby's dad is hoping to take the boys fishing one day, so here is Shelby showing Kyle the basic technique.

Here is Kyle trying to get the hang of it and is slowly learning, Aaron however was doing quite well and would have made Shelby's dad(Bubba) quite proud!

At the dock our kids and some other kids were trying to catch some fish at the dock.

Ray was at his usual sandcastle building, this time finding a stream to provide water.

Later the kids enjoyed the camping tradition of roasting marshmallows although most of them preferred regular marshmallows.

The next day we weren't sure how Kyle's bites would affect him. When the kids woke up the next day Aaron exclaims "Kyle is blind just like in the Bible!' We had just read the story of Saul's conversion on the road to Damascus where he becomes temporarily blind. So we looked at his eyes and he was quite swollen, but could fortunately see a little out of his one eye. Kyle seemed to take it all in stride and saying 'I have not two eyes, just one eye!'

Kyle only has a tricycle and when Madi and Lexi brought their bikes and were about the right size for him he wanted to try it out. What better time to try to learn to ride a bike when you can barely see out of only one eye??

Later Ginny and I took the kids(except Kyle) to look for some geocaches. Ginny and Lexi had not been before, but were intrigued how Madi was so into it. I ended up picking a hard cache to find as the co-ordinates were off a bit and sent us bushwacking and walking through mud when we really didn't have to in the end. They were troopers and still searched till we eventually found it. Ginny found a little rubber ball in their car for Lexi to put in the cache while Madi took a bracelet. When Lexi realized that the ball was staying at the cache she was very upset and cried for about 20 minutes. We went on to find another cache in the area and were telling her there might be another ball in the next cache. I had no idea what was going to be in the next cache but really hoping there was a ball to make this little girl happy. When we found the next cache there was no ball, but there was a shiny turtle which made Lexi forget about any rubber ball she was looking for. In the end they all seemed to enjoy it.
On the way to the cache we found this large stump.

Here is Ginny and the kids finding the cache.

Minus the mosquitoes, camping went pretty well in our first time using the trailer, seems the more we set it up and take it down the faster it gets, hopefully we will have many more good memories using it.


And today we wish Auntie Sara and big Happy Birthday! Here is Kyle(in his birthday suit) giving her a Canucks condiment holder of her very own! Enjoy!

PS. Kyle's face was swollen for about 2 days and is now pretty much back to his regular self.