Lakes, Tents & Boats, oh my!

This last weekend we packed up our bags, loaded up the car, and joined David's parents at Brownlee Reservoir in the Hells Canyon Recreational area for some good old-fashioned camping fun!

Mind you, this would not have been my first choice of recreation, because I don't much care for extreme heat, and they would not have named it Hells Canyon if the temperature topped out at 65 degrees! Also to get there, unless you fly to Boise, and then drive 2 hours, it's a 6 1/2 hour car ride from here. Finally, it's Tent Camping. Enough said.

However, every year right after Memorial Day, David's folks meet up at Brownlee with some friends of theirs from Boise, who have a boat. Typically, David's Dad will drive over Memorial Day, with their RV, and the guys fish & hang out all week, and then the girls arrive the following weekend, David's mom having flown to Boise, and then driving over with her friend.

This year was no different. We also arrived on that following Friday, after what seemed like an eternity in the car. Kyra couldn't understand why she was stuck in the car for that long, and only slept for maybe 45 minutes, so we knew we were in for a real treat :-)

We had a new tent that we inherited from David's folks, since they are now RV-ers. It's fairly nice, as far as tents go: I can stand up in it, and there was room for our queen-size air mattress, Kyra's Pack & Play (her bed for the weekend), and all our stuff. Unfortunately, as tents don't typically come with an attached outhouse, let's just say drinking a ton of water in order not to dehydrate was not fun! I have to say though, this RV park had very nice facilities, including free showers, so it could have been worse--think camping on the Deschutes with the only running water being the river, and no electricity. The other nice advantage with traveling with someone who owns an RV---AIR CONDITIONING!!! Needless to say, Kyra and I spent many an hour in the nice cool RV, when Saturday's temp reached 95 degrees.

We also got to take Kyra on her first ever boat ride. She wasn't thrilled about wearing the life preserver, but not wearing it, wasn't an option. Below are pictures of how she did:

On the dock

I'm not so sure about this...

All this, and you make me wear a hat, too?

All in all, she did very well, both on the boat, and the rest of the weekend, with only one real meltdown at dinner time.

And I think the following picture sums it up the best:

Camping is a lot of work when you're little :-)

Blessings friends, K~

P.S. If you think about it, we'd appreciate your prayers. Both David & I have come down with some icky stomach thing (fever, nausea, etc.), and we're just hoping to get over it quickly. More importantly, that Kyra doesn't get it as well.