Memorial Day Camping / Visit From Family

Over Memorial Day weekend Kate and I went camping at the Blue Knob State Park.




Kate played cards while she waited patiently for me to get a fire going with the damp wood collected from around the camp site.

The fire was pretty pathetic the first night because all the wood was wet around us from a storm the night before, so I learned my lesson and went and bought some dry wood for the second night . . .

. . . and we made S'mores . . .


I had forgotten how good they are!


The Blue Knob state park is basically a small mountain, and the state leases part of the north face off to a ski resort. Kate and I happened upon it while exploring and hiked around a bit. It was pretty retro though, it reminded me of the resorts in the older Warren Miller movies.


The resort was at the top of the mountain, and when you skied down, no matter which direction, all the lifts brought you right back to the same spot.



We took a hike around the mountain, and though it may not look like it, this section here was actually pretty steep. And due to our poor planning, it was our last stretch of the hike and by that time it was late in the morning and starting to get pretty hot and humid. Ugh.


We took several breaks on the way up, and during one of them we found this little guy. He was only about twice as big as my thumbnail at the most.


During the hot afternoon we took a drive, to be able to be in the air conditioning of the car, and went to find some covered bridges we had seen signs for on the way to the state park.


This last weekend my cousin Charlie and his fiance, Lizzie, came to visit us for a couple days. We headed down to south-eastern PA into Amish country.

The center of all the action was a little town by the name of Intercourse (no pun intended!). So we shamelessly flipped a U and went back to take a picture by the sign before going to the Amish market in town.


There were great markets will all sorts of great canned preserves, handmade goods, etc.