It has been about three weeks since we went camping, but I just haven't had time to write about it. Because my sister missed the family reunion and their moving date got pushed back, she wanted to go. We decided to go two weeks after the reunion on the last week in June. She wanted to check out Ledgefork because we had gone to Smith and Morehouse last year. They are about two miles apart. Smith and Morehouse is near the reservoir damn, and Ledgefork is on the other end of the reservoir. Ledgefork has about 70 campsites, but the bridge to the one side is damaged. Half the campground has been closed for three year. That only leaves about 30 sites. The good thing about it is that it is first come first choose. I don't like reserving sites on the internet, because you don't know what they are like. Plus they charge you a ten dollar service fee. As long as you come up the first part of the week, there is no problem getting a site. Thursday through the week end you would want to be there first thing in the morning, although the people leaving have until one o'clock to pack up.
My dad ended up taking off work to come with us, unlike last year, when it was just the girls. My of course came as did my sister with four of her five kids. Her oldest daughter and my youngest sister are in high school, and both have summer jobs. They have been very busy this year. Thomas couldn't come the whole time, but he and my sister Jennae came up half way through the trip.
As we were getting ready to go I looked back at last years entry to see how long we were there, and what we did. This year ended up being a little less structured. We played games, but more short ones. I think that we did more sitting around. Here are some of the highlights.
The first day we were there, I was in charge of dinner. I had seen directions on the internet about cooking Pizza over the first using a pizza stone. I thought that sounded like fun. I decided to buy the pizzas from Papa Murphy's our favorite pizza place. The first problem we encountered was how to get the pizza off the cardboard backing sheet. We ended up just leaving it on. The directions were to just cook it over the fire, which was my original plan. The campground has some really nice swiveling cooking grills. My dad thought it would be better to cook it with brickets. So that is what we did. In the oven you have heat all around , but outdoors you lose a lot of your heat, so I ended up covering the pizza with tinfoil. Just after this we noticed that the pizza stone was cracked. I think that it got heated too quickly. At this point we ended up dumping the brickets in the fire pit, adding some wood and putting the broken stone on the grill. It ended up a little bit crunchy in the center and a little doughy on the edges, but it was still good. We cooked the second pizza in the oven in my mom's trailer, but it ended up more burnt than the fire cooked one. After dinner we cooked s'mores on the leftover coals.
We went on several walks while we were there. There was a stream nearby that we had to go visit each day. We also had occasional walks to the outhouse. I was close to the end of the book I was reading and read it while walking a couple of times. Luckily the roads in the campground are paved. I also brought my bike. I was the only one, so we didn't go a lot, but at least once a day I would take the kids on a ride around the loop. Tristan wanted to go anytime he noticed the bike trailer. 
He also enjoyed helping grandpa. Both kids seemed to enjoy being there a lot. After the family reunion Isabelle said, "That wasn't camping. I want to go mountain camping!" Lucky for us this qualified for mountain camping. She loved the stream. They also like going across the log bridge on the edge of camp. It was over a dry stream bed. It was really dry and dusty, and they spent quite a bit of time just getting dirty.
Thursday when everyone was there we decided to go over to the damn since several people hadn't been there last year, and I never made it over to see the spillway. We spent a little time playing near the water, where we ate our lunch we had packed. They we walked over to the spillway. Last year, it was a raging river. This year it was dry. Paul complained about walking, but we made him anyway.
Everyone enjoyed the day. It was a nice walk.
Isabelle's main question of course is, "When can we going camping again?"
Oh, this makes me miss everyone! It was so fun.
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