EggBlog: Camping machines

We went camping with the Schraders this year for Thanksgiving. I think everyone had a good time and the girls are already asking when we can go camping again. It might be the only way we have to get rid of the huge stacks of firewood in the back yard since it's not really cold enough for our fireplace to bet getting any real use. We took 3 Rubbermaid bins of wood and had a nice camp fire going by the time the sun went down. Our original plan had called for preparation of all of the Thanksgiving food to be done at home then carried to the park and we would eat it there. The forecast wasn't looking too good since it called for scattered thunder storms so we ate at home and then drove out to get set up for camping. We went to Blue Springs for the camping, and we got a pretty good camp site. They have electricity and water and we were close to the bathrooms and the trail down to the springs. Loki and Hanzie got to make the trip, since the tents we got have little dog houses attached. Loki even slept in his! Melissa felt bad for him being stuck in there and let him into the main tent and he was in there for about 3 minutes before he went back into his little den on his own. Anyway, it didn't rain until we got a few light showers off an on overnight, but we were tucked into the tent by then.

If we do this again next year I'm going to lobby for a 2 day trip. It's a lot of work to get everything set up and then take it back down again just for one night...

While Chris and I were setting up the tents Jen called on the cell phone and said there was a bear down by the Springs and I had better get my camera and get down there... I thought she was being a pain in the butt and just hassling us while we were trying to be productive, but there was a Florida Black Bear down there after all.

There are only about 1500 of these bears left in the state, and Central Florida has a bunch of them.

Since it's so warm in Florida, most of these bears don't hibernate or only do so for a short time.

Males average a little over 300 lbs and females could be half that. This could be a male, since a female is more likely to stay in a den with her cub than be out in the Winter months.

~80% of their diet is vegetarian and they also eat the occasional armadillo or some road kill.

Speaking of bears, here is another wild creature shocked to be caught by the camera while eating pumpkin pie.

Camp fire!

I borrowed a screen tent from my boss and the kids made good use of it while playing some Uno. The mosquitoes were insane. I had to put bug spray on over and over and I'm still covered in bites today.

Don't worry... she's the one who dealt it. Okay, I'm not really sure what was going on here, but it may have been her protecting her delicate lungs while Chris and I were using the remnants of the campfire to conduct a few scientific experiments relative to the melting points of select materials in non-controlled environment.

June-squatch catching a nap by the fire.

Once we packed up all the camping gear and broke down the tents we went for a walk in the morning. This is the view toward the St Johns river from up near the head of the Spring.