We spent the weekend camping with our kids up in the Colville National Forest at Sullivan Creek, just above Sullivan Lake. It was a lot of fun. James and I have been going to Sullivan Creek since we were first married (wayyyyy back in 1994!) We are extremely familiar with the area, and have probably camped in almost every spot along Sullivan Creek. It's so beautiful up there. We got up there late this time, lunchtime on Friday, so there were only two spots left, both across the road from the creek. So we camped in the better of the two, and our silver lining was that the bathroom was at the beginning of the entrance into our camp spot. Score! No digging holes this weekend!
Friday was spent just setting up camp and cooking dinner and letting the kids explore our area. We did walk down the road a bit to a good spot to get into the creek, and the kids had fun throwing rocks in. Gretchen and Daniel took their shoes and socks off with me and waded in the creek a bit. Austin left his on, and was throwing rocks, and ended up slipping and falling into the creek, getting wetter than the rest of us. But he did it with such grace! He thought it was kind of funny.
Saturday we fixed a big pancake and bacon breakfast, and then packed into the van and drove down to Sullivan Lake (about 5 or 10 minutes from our camp spot) and swam and had a picnic lunch. The kids had a ball with it! We then drove into Metalline Falls, and treated the kids to ice cream sundaes, right after mommy shopped at Sweet Creek Creations quilt store. This is a famous quilt store with a liquor store in the back end of it. Perfect for everyone! When we sat down for our ice creams, Daniel said, "you mean, we get dessert before dinner? Cool!"
We stopped at Mill Pond on our way back to the camp spot and explored the spillway - the kids thought it was a cool waterfall. Although Daniel almost gave me a heart attack when he started to climb the bridge railings to see the waterfall better. James snatched him down quickly, and it was about 10 minutes before my heart was back to normal pace!
Our dinner that night was yum my rib eye steaks cooked over an open fire - heavenly! After dinner the kids were definitely showing signs of being overtired - running around like banshees chasing each other. But we giggled more than we've giggled in a long time! Daniel got a bad case of the sillies, and was just being goofy, which then made Austin and Gretchen silly goofy, and pretty soon we were all laughing! But we finally got them settled down with some jiffy pop popcorn and a great game of Diego 1-2-3. They were all asleep in the trailer before we even got the door closed I think!
Sunday we had a yummy breakfast of bacon and scrambled eggs, and then got everything packed up. We were on the road by about 10:30 or 11 am, which was good. We topped off our weekend by eating lunch at the Ram Drive Inn across from my old high school - and ran into some of our church friends while we were there.
It really was a great weekend, and the boys both said their favorite part was helping Daddy build the camp fire, and Gretchen's favorite was seeing the momma and baby deer on our way back from Mill Pond. My favorite part was drinking wine and reading my book and talking with James as we sat by the camp fire - such a relaxing weekend!
Gretchen in her orange finery!
