Our First Day at Camp

My husband's family owns a camp in northern Maine on the largest lake in Maine - Moosehead Lake. His grandfather bought the land years ago & over time they have built & fixed the cabin on it. His entire family enjoys getting up there for some R&R in the summer time, fall, & even winter sometimes.

My discovery every time I go is how much I love modern technology! :-) I would not make a great pioneer woman & I'm thankful I don't have to. It's sometimes scary too knowing we are four hours from the closest hospital of any size while we are there with our three rambunctious boys!

Last year was my first year back after not going for almost seven years. It was our middle & youngest sons first time being there. They were five & two at the time. Our oldest had been 1-2 times with us & 1-2 times with just his grandparents. They all love it there. It's really a "boy-heaven."

This is the view of the lake from the porch of the cabin The building on the right is the boathouse. It's used for storage mostly & not of boats. :-)

Since I am the lone woman in a family of men, I do make sacrifices from time to time & do things I know they love. I don't love doing these things, but I know the memories involved will far outlast my dislike of the time. Going to Moosehead falls in to this category - for me anyway.

We cannot drive to the cabin & so we park in a little meadow about 1/2 a mile walk away. Thanks to some unthankful ATV riders, nothing with wheels (other than vehicles) are allowed on the logging roads including bicycles! This means you have to come in by boat or haul it all in our your back. Since we don't own a boat...you guessed it! Everyone carried at least a backpack plus some.

Our three year old carried his little plastic Finding Nemo backpack with some toys, his blankie & his "Little Pup" stuffie to sleep with. Our middle son carried a rucksack with towels in it. Our oldest carried his hiking backpack with all of the children's clothes inside. I carried my backpack with my clothes plus a satchel with books. I cannot go three days without something to read! I also had a small canvas grocery bag with veggies. My hubby carried the most. I'm guessing his pack was close to 70 pounds (If I'm wrong he can correct me in the comment section) plus a cooler in the other hand. Even our dog carried a pack. She had her food, some corn on the cob & some water bottles. My hubby & the two older boys had to do a second trip to bring in the rest. Needless to say, packing smart & light is paramount!

While J & I relaxed on the porch waiting for the men to return I snapped some fun photos of J.

Such a silly boy!

It was in the low 80's on Friday with a nice breeze. The bugs weren't bad & the water was great. We finally relented & let the boys go swimming shortly after we arrived. They spent about an hour in the water. I spent about the same amount of time throwing rocks for my dog to chase - in to the water of course.

Since I had snapped photos of J earlier, I wanted to be sure to get photos of the other two boys as well. They were feeling silly so this is what I ended up with...

To finish out the night, we set up a game of Settlers. We play the Cities & Knights expansion. It ended up going way long as we kept breaking for meals (we started around 4:30) & wildlife coming through the area (see the wildlife post). We finally called the game around 8:30 & my hubby won by default. Of course, he usually wins anyway so he set up a handicap system to give B & I a fighting chance!

This photo is really dark & I had planned to snap a better one during daylight, but I forgot so this is the only one I have! This is just after we saw the beavers & had run down to the dock to get photos! We made the boys stay on shore. They were all wearing Crocs & it was wet. We didn't want them all falling in to the lake!