Vacation versus Stay-cation

Vacation: When you vacate the premises to enjoy time off from your normal activities for awhile.

Stay-cation: When you stay at home and enjoy time off from your normal activities.

We planned to do the first, but ended up doing the second one.

The car trip to Manatee Springs State Park went well. It was 4:45 long, but the babies traveled well and we only needed to stop to feed the babies a few times. We caravanned with John, Nessa, and almost-two-month-old Carlie. 

The Burger King Princess complete with crown

The car was packed to the max!

Anna in her cocoon

Lily playing with the iPhone

We arrived at about 6:30pm and set up camp. I love our new tent! It is totally wonderful to have so much room to walk around in it standing completely upright. Cabin tents are the way to go - no more dome tents for me! We have a divider curtain so we put the girls on one side and us on the other. Four people with four beds, all of our luggage in the tent closets, and plenty of room to walk around. It is the size of an RV and Nessa teased that if we got an RV, we would feel cramped after our roomy tent. An RV would be a downgrade!

Anna slept well in the pack-n-play

Lily had a pad on the floor for her bed

Lily's hair was super curly after a night in the humidity.

Manatee Springs State Park would be pure heaven except for two things. But more on that later.

We spent Saturday night setting up camp. John and Nessa borrowed our old tent and also set up their new screen tent over the picnic table. 

After we finished setting up camp, we drove 10 minutes to WalMart to buy groceries for cooking. We ate at a Mexican restaurant first. We ate supper at 10pm!

We had a grocery shopping party with everyone pitching in to quickly find what we needed. My girls were so exhausted - especially Lily. We finished, got back to camp, and into bed at 11:30pm.

Sunday morning we slowly got ready for church. The question was, where to go? John had researched several churches, but they were an hour away. We wouldn't have made it in time. I had spotted a sign for a Baptist church on the road to camp, and we went there. We arrived ten minutes before Sunday School started. It was a wonderful conservative church that I enjoyed very much. Chiefland Baptist Church had conservative music and great preaching. It was small - there were about 40 people in Sunday School. I have to say the singing was extraordinarily off-pitch. :-) I sang loudly to help out, but I was a half-step off from everyone else so it didn't help much. It was kind of funny. The preaching was great - about how to keep revival in your life. They had just finished a week of revival services that was a huge success.

After church we went back to camp and ate sandwiches for lunch. The rest of the afternoon was quiet with naps and such. Sunday evening it rained and rained and rained. We discovered that there are five points of entry for water in our tent. At least it is so big that it didn't hurt to have our luggage in the middle of the tent.

We hosted a Catan party in our tent on James' cot - until 11:30! It was super nice to have a big tent for that too.

Poor John and Nessa had a fight with a racoon all night that night. They heard him in the picnic table tent and found he had gotten the butter out of the cooler and dug in the bags of food. They put the coolers under the table, but he could still reach through the crack and get the food in them. Then they put them under the bench and removed all food from the tent. The process was all night long, and James and I slept through it! I know I was tired for sure - getting ready for the trip was exhausting.

Monday morning we made it to the springs that was a scant 1/4 mile away. It is beautiful. James put both girls in the bike trailer and biked there, and I walked. I got there and couldn't find James, so I walked down the boardwalk thinking he was there. Lovely walk, but no James or girls. I walked to the springs and chatted with a lady there. Still no James. Finally he biked up with his crying load of girls. He had tested the spring and then gone back to get his swimming clothes. Anna got some attention, and Lily got to get out, so they felt better. 

The spring is lovely! It is hundreds of feet deep, but you can see each grain of sand on the bottom because it is so clear.  James loved watching the huge fish down there. I was a little nervous to think about how deep it is and how huge the fish were beneath me. We all put our feet in the water while James tried to work up the courage to jump in - it was cold!

 James needed the snorkel from camp and the girls needed to change if they were going to swim so I biked them in the trailer back to camp then back to the spring. The girls were exhausted - Lily was getting sick too. I decided they needed naps instead of swimming. When both girls were sleeping under John and Nessa's care, James and I got to go back to the springs and swim together. I have to brag that I actually jumped in on the count of three - it was so shockingly cold!! I discovered that I like to be able to breathe too much to stick my face in the water and swim. I loved swimming with the snorkel though. James had a blast watching the fish. He loves aquariums, and he got to swim in one!

We had campfire stew that evening and all went to bed early.

Now for part two of why the Springs wasn't pure heaven.

Ticks.

The Racoons and the ultra-friendly deer brought visitors. Poor baby Carlie got a tick on her, John, Nessa, and I all got quite a few. They give new meaning to the term, "getting under my skin." It was not a pleasant thought to know that I was host to them.

Beating out bedding to hopefully remove the ticks

So we broke camp Tuesday morning and finished packing up by 1pm.

We ate at McDonalds on the way out of town.

It was a short weekend of camping, with Monday being the most fun day by far. I'm glad we went even though it was shorter than planned. I enjoyed it. 

I love our TENT! We also love our new bike rack. It will be wonderful to load the car with our bikes and the bike trailer for a ride down the heritage trail in Milton. We also enjoyed the picnic table tent very much.