Camping Fun!

We had a great weekend in the great outdoors! Friday after work we headed up to Devil's Lake State Park to meet up with everyone for a weekend of camping. I love camping, but unfortunately don't get to go very often, so I've been really looking forward to this weekend.

Not the best picture of us, but what can I say, we were hiking!
Saturday morning we woke up to Pat cooking a gigantic breakfast of french toast and sausages and then we headed off for a beautiful hike. We hiked up to Balanced Rock - a very steep hike, but very well worth it for the gorgeous views from the top of the mountain. We opted to take the longer route back down and headed to the East Bluff trail - it was such a beautiful hike and a nice trail. We stopped a few times to check out some of the cool rock formations (yes, I am that geek that gets a kick out of looking at rock formations) and plants.It was neat having Jarod (aka "Mr. DNR") with us to educate us on all the different plants and conservation efforts going on in the area. I love that he has such a passion for what he does.

The guys stopping to see how high up we were
After we made it back to our campsite we were pooped and spent the rest of the day hanging out. We took a little snooze in the hammock and then played a little volleyball before dinner.
Chris, Christina and Nich and Sarah came up to join us for the evening and we spent another night sitting around the campfire, having fun, chatting it up and eating Smores!

Sunday morning we had an extra special surprise, we were just getting ready to sit down to yet another huge breakfast (of course made by Pat) when a mini-van pulled into our campsite and a lady got out yelling something about wanting a free breakfast. I was shocked when I looked up and saw Alma! Apparently she had been talking to Julie for weeks and had planned to surprise us. It was so good to see her, Brad and the kids. We hung out with them for the afternoon and then parted ways. They're going to vacation in Wisconsin Dells for a few days and will come back and stay with us toward the end of the week for a few days.
I just love having friends from St. Louis come visit us...even more then I love going back home to visit them!
It was a fun weekend and so good to get away. I can't say that I was able to completely forget about all the things that I needed to be taking care of around the house or the stresses of some of the stuff going on at work, but it was kind of nice to be forced to get away from it all.
Next weekend we'll actually be in town for the first weekend in what feels like forever. I'm really looking forward to waking up in my own bed on Saturday morning and enjoying my morning coffee.