Camping at Eleven Mile

We did a two day camping trip to Eleven Mile State Park this past weekend. We went with Chris, Zack and Nathan, Chris' dad. The kids had a great time. They got to go fishing. They played in the tents. They went exploring and they consumed a fair amount of smores.




Jenelle's idea of fishing is kinda funny. It's more a contest to see who can cast their pole the farthest. She is quite the good caster. She can almost cast her pole better then her dad. So 10 seconds after Jenelle gets her worm in the water she is asking if she can reel it back in so she can cast again. We didn't catch a single fish, but I don't think she cared.



I was a little disappointed with our campsite. There was one hiking trail that went along the lake, but the trail was one big ant hill. If you didn't keep moving the ants would swarm your feet. If you haven't gone for a hike with a 5 year old lately, they stop every 2 seconds to pick up a rock or look at a flower or watch a bird fly by. We were almost yelling at the kids to keep moving because the ants were so bad. Not a very good hike. We tried again later along a rocky trail. The ants weren't bad and the kids had fun climbing on the rocks, but we ran into two dead carcasses. Half the bones were picked clean and the other half of the animal still had skin on it. Very gross, but the kids were fascinated. They wanted to know when the animal was going to be alive again. We said the animal is dead. "Dead dead?" was their reply. Like they know of another kind of dead.

The campsite was also lacking trees. I really love that pine smell. We drove 2.5 hours to get to the park. If I'm going to drive that far, I want nice scenery. We did have a nice time, but I don't think we'll camp there again anytime soon.

We almost didn't stay for the second night. The wind was blowing so bad and our tent doesn't do well in the wind. The wind caved half the tent in. We considered going home. Jenelle was concerned that we would be leaving before the smores portion of the evening. The wind eventually died down and we stayed the second night and had a lot of fun.

Next weekend we are camping at Jellystone up in Estes Park. Jenelle's cousins are coming to town and we're all going up to camp. Check out the blog for our next camping adventure.