Camping at Kettletown State Park

One of our best weekends this summer was spent camping at Kettletown State Park. It's located in Southbury which is actually about a half hour away. It is amazing how one minute you can be in a fairly large city and the next you can feel like you are in the middle of no where. There are so many trees here, it just shelters you from the world! This campsite/park was really nice with great showers etc. There was also a nice lake and hiking trails. The staff had also planned lots of great activities that the kids could do. It really was just a nice set up. Just funny. I call it city camping because the campsites were really close together and the ice cream truck came by right about dinner time. The camp staff had activities planned that could keep your children occupied the whole time you were there. It was sad to me to see parents taking there kids camping and then not actually spending time with them. There was this one little boy (about 8 or 9) who kept coming over to our campsite to hang out with all the kids. It was kind of sad, because he was literally hanging out with us all Saturday morning and we never saw his parents. I think he was an only child and was just lonely. He really wanted to hold the baby, all the time. Kind of annoying, but I really did feel bad for him. As for us, we pulled into camp around 6:30 and immediately started putting up the tent. It didn't take long for me to realize that we had left one of the poles back at home. We really weren't that far from home, but didn't want to go back, so we used our ingenuity to jimmyrig our tent so it would stand. We tied it to a tree (Justin's idea) and used a branch to prop it up (my idea). OK so Justin's idea was better than mine.

THere's my oh so sturdy branch. (tiny tim's crutch as Justin called it).

The tent tied to a tree.

The sign in the bathroom asking us not to hang our tent to the tree.

John on our hike.

Super Michelle.

Nathan. This is the picture he took into kindergarten to show all of his classmates about his summer.

Climbing a huge rock on the trail.

Samantha at the lake. Love the goggles.

Joseph and John building sand tunnels.

My birthday. Justin made me a cake with fruity pebbles for frosting. It was GGGGrrreat! This picture is all the kids jumping on me and waking me up from my sunday nap with my freshly baked cake. Happy birthday to me!