Camping at Palmetto State Park

Several months ago, Derek had planned a little road trip for us this summer to visit three nearby National Parks--Big Bend, Carlsbad Caverns, and Guadalupe Mountains. But as with everything else, COVID-19 altered our plans. Not all of the National Parks had fully reopened as of yet, and we are currently only allowed to travel 150 miles from base. So we made lemons out of lemonade & Derek found a nearby state park open with campsites available! It was HOT, but FUN!

It was only about a 75ish minute drive from our house--Hadley was busy on our way there "making videos" on her caboodle for her students & Brady was all smiles!

 

Our campsite had a lot of loose/fine dirt/sand, and of course this made for hours of fun...and lots of dirty children! We were all covered in sweat & dirt the entirety of this trip! :)

If you look closely in the picture below, you'll see a dragonfly resting on Hadley's fingertips! Shelby and Hadley probably spent a good hour in the river with the dragonflies continually landing on them. I've never seen anything like it--they had the best time!

Those are fireflies in Hadley's water bottle in the picture below. Our kids have never gotten to experience fireflies before, but they were everywhere at this park! They had the BEST time running around and squealing at dusk as all of the lightning bugs were emerging!

After breakfast on our second & final morning of our camping excursion, we decided to go fishing & then hike some of the trails before finishing packing up and heading home. "Check out" time was by noon.

Mother Nature had other plans for us though. ;) Just as we were wrapping up our fishing time, we started to hear rumbles of thunder..so we high tailed it back to our campsite. Thankfully we {read: Derek} had done the majority of our packing up earlier that morning while the kids ate breakfast, but we still had a good bit to do as the sky suddenly opened up! It was quite the adventure loading up our car in the pouring rain!

{Brady fast asleep on our drive home}

We had the BEST time, but of course it was SO good to come home! Nothing like camping in 100 degree temps to make you appreciate the AC, your bed, and the ability to prepare/eat a meal without swatting a million flies. ;)  But we're already talking about next camping trip..we're thinking the fall sounds nice next time around! :)