Our Summer Vacation 2010!

One of my favorite views in Wayne County!

Oh a camping we will go,....a camping we will go,...haha you get the hint. We took our first long camping trip the second week of August 2010. This year we had to do our vacation differently. Dusty's busy season is April-Oct. basically, and we usually plan our vacations and all of our mini trips in the fall/winter. BUT, this year our life has changed...Gracie started school, which put a big screeching halt to all those fall trips. We welcome the new change in our life and we are sure we will still have just as many trips but now we will have to fit them in in the summer with EVERYONE else! :) No more empty beaches with beach front houses with those fall rates for us to enjoy...it will be during the hot busy summer like I said with EVERYONE else. lol

We choose this year to have our vacation in our favorite park and close to family too. Since we bought a camper over the summer we took it to Sam A Baker State Park and camped for a week. My family came over and camped with us too. Which was perfect for getting to spend lot's of time with them. We only saw one snake from a nice distance too the whole trip. We now need to camp in only two more parks to get our Missouri Camper Patch that Gracie is excited about. You must camp in five State Parks in a calender year to get your MO camper patch...we'll work on those other two this fall with some weekend trips...which we already have planned out!

Let me start off by saying which I am sure some are tired of hearing this...the scenery in Southeast Missouri is beautiful! These are are the hills that I miss and love. You don't know how lucky you are to live somewhere till you move off and come back for visits. Northern Missouri is pretty flat, well compared to where I grew up in SEMO. EVERY time we head south for a visit to my mom and dad's house I am amazed at the scenery change as we get on Hwy 67 south @ St. Louis. I am always saying "wow, look at those hills!" haha, I am positive that Dusty is sick of hearing about it but never tires himself at looking at them. One visit to Sam A, Gracie said "Look at those mountains!".

We got there on a Sunday afternoon after a slight two hr delay with minor car trouble and unloaded everything...the bikes, all the camping gear, the Xbox 360 and the flat screen TV...we like to camp with all the luxuries of home. :) We had a excessive heat index warning for 6 days straight, but that didn't stop the biking to the park store, taking a morning hike or anything else for that matter...we would bike and then go get into the river! We did go to my mom's house too and take advantage of her huge refreshing pool as well. As always the trip ended with goodbyes from Gracie to her favorite goats, a trip to "Grandma's station" to get a special soda and a "Grandma's station granola bar" before we head 5 hrs north back to Macon.


There is just something about going back to where you grew up at that re-energizes me. Then I am good until about 6-8 weeks later and then I feel like it's time to go back again. I actually got to see two good friends of mine this trip too which was nice and I got to have a kid-less dinner with my sister. And we had a mini party and we celebrated my Dad's 50th Birthday! Overall it was a great relaxing trip and I was just happy to be with my family and create special memories with them.