Ah, we are home again after a very busy weekend of camping!
It was a whole lot of fun, with a few speedbumps thrown in.
We packed up on Thursday morning and headed up to western MD.
Our first stop was Frostburg, so that Laura and I could shop and Tim could get a look at Bonnie Blue, the '72. Another story.
I was watching the sky because "scattered showers" had been forecast. It was looking like they might miss us for the most part.
The campground is about 30 minutes from Frostburg, so we set out following L&A down I68.
When we got there we checked in, and were sent down to the lower tenting area. We pulled in, found our sites, and the "scattered showers" found us. The "shower" was actually a very heavy downpour, complete with thunder and lightning. Tim had already started to unpack the tent, and he had to stay outside and put up the tarp that was to go over it. I was amazed that it stayed as dry as it did.
I huddled in the van with the boys. It was packed to the rafters and we had to keep it running so that it wouldn't fog up! We listened to "Revenge of the Sith". We have been working our way through that for awhile!
So it finally quit raining and Tim and I got the tent up. I unloaded the bedding and we blew up the air mattresses.
Then we went over to "camp Cooke" to get dinner going. The fire was a bit stubborn because the fire pit was all wet.
We did get a roaring fire going, and were sitting around toasting marshmallows. It was getting pretty dark, we were getting ready to head for our tent, and out of the corner of my eye I saw something moving toward the camp. We all pointed flashlights out into the field and in the beams we saw a little black and white form scuttling away from the light.
A Skunk! That's really not what we had in mind when we had visions of communing with wildlife.
Our tent escaped a visit, but the Cooke family wasn't so lucky. He came poking his nose around their tent at around 3:00 am and just as he got close Lucy let out a yell and it scared the spray right out of him! Not much though. It was gone early on.
The next morning was beautiful! John called me out of the tent to see the rays of morning sun on the hills.
So the next day we went to the pool and had a great time swimming and staying cool. Tim had to come back down to Bel Air to go to the doctor for his pre-op physical. He got back around dinnertime. Andrew and John went fishing in the Potomac
and we watched a group of canoe campers setting up a ways from our camp.After dinner we sat around for awhile and a few of the nearby campers shot off a few fireworks.
How nice that they were having so much fun! We went to bed and they kept having fun. We said our prayers and the fun continued. We could hear them having more and more fun! Obviously aided by the influence of a prodigious amount of adult beverage of all sorts. So by 3:00 am I was longing for the quiet little skunk! Needless to say, we didn't get a lot of sleep.
Saturday we got up and got going because we wanted to hike to the Paw-Paw Tunnel.
A very, very interesting tunnel on the C&O Canal. The tunnel is 2/3 of a mile long! 
It's very dark, but the boys brought their flashlights and we had light to hike by. It wasn't the Mines of Moria, but it was pretty dark!The boys had fun getting water to come up out of a pump on the river
and the were very good hikers.
And here is an interesting place that I had to have a picture of. This is WAY up in the hills on a backroad. Bet the guys love coming to this place! What a hoot!It was hot, so when we got back the boys went for a swim. One of the guys from the camp that had kept us up all night was standing in the pool in a hungover stupor. I would have felt worse for him if I hadn't been so tired...
I stepped into the water and slipped on the steps and landed really hard. I pulled muscles in my shoulder, yeah, the bad one, and worse, I forgot that I had my cell phone in the pocket of my shorts! I opened it and saw the black screen of death. Oh.
It appears to have recovered.
After our swim we went down to change and went right up the hill to a beautiful little church, St Patrick's. What a Blessing to have an opportunity to attend Mass in such a perfect location! I couldn't believe that there was a church right next to the campground! This is MILES up in the mountains.
We had a nice dinner and sat around the fire for awhile and then went to bed.
The neighbors had used up most of their fireworks, but not all.
However, the neighbors up the hill decided to do some target practice with some really big weapons of unknown variety. It sounded like the Hatfields and McCoys were shooting it out up there. Well, it is western MD. It went on for a very long time.
We did finally get to sleep, and then packed everything up and hit the road for home.
I know the boys had a great time and so did we! Lots of excitement.
It was good to be home. I think this must be why we camp. It's a lot of fun, but it's also so nice to go home!
