Sure I looooooove the beach, the smell of the ocean, the warm sand on my toes, the cool breeze from water and the beautiful Caribbean blues……..BUT, I’d be lying if I told you I miss the simple life sometimes of the great outdoors. Growing up our family vacations consisted of going camping for weeks and weeks on end. I didn’t actually get the opportunity to go to the ocean for the first time until I was in high school…..so camping is all I knew! I was a little tom boy who wasn’t afraid to get a little dirt under her fingernails. My parents have since purchased a camp near the small town of Tidioute, PA. It’s located just past Cooks Forest and it’s a little weekend get away that takes me back to childhood.
We don’t get to go all the time, because I’m always shooting weddings on Saturdays when everyone else goes up…but when we did, we make up for it! We are even thinking of buying a Class B RV and are currently looking on campingfunzone.com to find the best option for us. It will just mean that we will be able to get to the camp site so much easier without having to pack and unpack everything each time. Mallory spends almost every weekend with my parents when they do go up, and it makes me so happy that Mallory gets to run around and just be a kid like I did growing up. There’s very little internet service there to begin with…so you won’t find kids behind computers or ipods (*GASP), everyone is fishing, canoeing, swimming in the river or riding bikes.
We have a 10 week straight wedding streek coming up in a few weeks where every weekend of ours will be gobbled up with weddings (it’s a good thing I LOOVE my job! haha) so we thought we’d take one of the few weekends we had free to go up and hang out at camp. Yes, I took a camera–it’s just what I do but I didn’t have it with me the whole time-these are just some random shots from the weekend! Some of the images were shot with my handy dandy iphone, others with my GoPro and the rest with my big girl camera!
ohh and here’s a little video….we condensed a weekend into a 2 minute video! I’m an amateur-don’t judge!
Getting ready to head out for a day of tubing on the water!
Canoeing! Mallory’s back there, she’s hiding behind my head! haha!
A float down the river wouldn’t be the same without my watermelon! I told you I was obsessed! hahaa!
We found a shallow area for the kids to play!
Me and my mom! My Italian side comes from her….but she’s blonde and pale! hahah!
Visiting the old fire tower in Cooks Forest…..I’m telling ya, all those step aerobics classes payed off! haha! haha!
I caught a mama crayfish….look at all of her eggs!
Jim ended up catching a 27″ walleye…so we had to take some underwater photos!
Out for a hike!
I laugh every time I see this. There’s a spring not far from camp that they often go to in order to fill up water jugs for cooking, etc……..they had no idea it was going to explode…they both got wet!
I’m definitely NOT a nature photographer…but gosh nature can sure be pretty!
A perfect egg in the basket….Mallory’s Favorite!
I smelllllllllll bacon!!
and just for the record….I like to burn my marshmallows! 🙂
Brings back so many childhood memories! Beautiful shots, great story, beautiful people!