Camping

This weekend is a bittersweet weekend for my hubby. This weekend he, his brothers, our oldest daughter, Ava, and our oldest nephew Reece will take Paw-Paw's ashes to Mt. Katahdin. For those of you that don't know, Mt Katahdin is a mountain in Maine, it is one end of the Appalachian Trail. Before Shawn's dad passed away he expressed his wishes to be cremated and his ashes to be spread on Katahdin. Every year all four brothers along with their dad would camp at and hike up Katahdin on Father's Day weekend. So on this weekend we will celebrate the father's in our family by paying tribute to a great father who is no longer with us in this life.

Because the hike to the top of Katahdin is 9 miles Shawn and I felt we needed to prepare and test Ava to make sure she was capable of handling such a rigorous hike. Last month Shawn took Ava and Anabelle up Cadillac Mountain on a 4.5 mile hike, they did awesome!! They had such a great time and couldn't wait for their next one! We decided to try them on a longer hike, a 7.4 mile hike up Cadillac and to go camping the night before so she could have both experiences.

So last weekend we headed to Mount Desert Island for the girls first camping trip and my second camping trip ever!! We had such a wonderful time! We left the two younger kiddos at home with my parents and spent some much needed quality time with our big girls. We built a campfire, and set up the tent and our picnic table.

We then headed out for a walk on one of the trails at the campground. We found an Amphitheater where the girls put on a short impromptu dance show for us!

After our walk we went back to camp and cooked our steaks, roasted our marshmallows and then snuggled into our tent for some light reading and a good nights rest. We woke up the next morning to the pitter patter of rain on our tent, and since hiking in the rain isn't really any fun and can be dangerous, we decided after breakfast to pack up and head out.

We figured we would just drive around the island for a bit since we were already down there and had some time. We came across this trail called Wonder Land, it was pretty short and the rain had lightened up so we thought we'd check it out.

It was a lovely little trail that lead us to the ocean and then looped back to where we parked our van.

We also went to see one of the lighthouses on the island and some of the beautiful old Carriage trails as well as some of the ginormous houses! Overall it was such a great weekend and the girls had a wonderful time despite the rain! We will definitely be doing some more camping and hikes this summer!

I pray that Shawn and Ava and the rest of the group get safely up the mountain and safely back down and that this weekend turns out to be everything the boys are hoping it will be. Happy Father's day to all you Dad's out there. We miss you so very much Paw-Paw.