Thanksgiving, Camping, and Letterboxing (oh, fishing too)

We tried something new this year for Thanksgiving.  We went camping.  My mother is a campground host at Croft State Park in SC so we went to visit her.

It was actually a beautiful park.  It has many hiking/biking trails as well as equestrian trails.  Yes, there were many horse people there (though we did not run into any on the trails).  The park was once a training/prison camp during WWII.  There were a fair amount of items that have been found and collected from that time period.  I did not get a picture of that, but there was a grenade, bomb fragments, and other metal scrap pieces.

With over 7,000 acres there are LOTS of trails (also a 150 acre lake).  I will start with the campground.  We shared her host spot.  We were right next to the bathhouse, one the nicest I have been in actually.  Here are some pictures of the campsite.  The larger unit with walls is her RV, the smaller unit with flaps is our tent.

Her RV is very nice, perfect for her.  She has a living room, kitchen, bedroom, and bathroom.  Oh, and heat also.  The boys slept with her while Paul and I opted for privacy in the tent.  We thought we would be okay, after all Nana loaned us her electric blanket.  Well, we had one problem - the blanket did not work.  That might have been the most sunggling I have ever experienced, but it was still probably the coldest I have ever been.  Then my mom and I left at 4:30 to go shopping (campground is 10 miles from civilization).  Wow, this was may be the most crowds I had ever seen.  We did not get much shopping done but at least the stores with warm.

We like to letterbox, so before we left I researched to see if there were any in the park - there were 8.  We looked our list over and decided on a series of 8 titled "Jungle Book".  As named, it was eight characters from the Jungle Book.  So we started, the boys chose to ride their bikes as they have learned that these can be long.  We ended up only finding three.  The first two were challenging, but we were able to find them.  Number three was very hard, we looked for almost 40 minutes before giving up and going on the number four.  Unfortunately, my mother was having back and leg pains from a pinched nerve and had to stop.  We found number four and then went back to camp.  Overall it was about a 3 1/2 mile hike.  Oh, the boys did find a bike ramp/jump thing that they had fun with.  Also, we crossed a bridge over a beautiful river.  I am sure that would be fun to play in during the summer.

A quick history lesson; letterboxing traces it's origins back to 1854 in England.  The Smithsonian Magazine published an article about it in 1998.  Here is a link to the site we use to find our "boxes" http://www.atlasquest.com/

Here are some pictures of the boys' books.  The stamp at the front with their name is the stamp they use to "leave their calling card".

 

 

 Here is the first stamp we ever found in 2006:

And here is what we found this trip:

This is our journey to finding those this trip:

Our first stamp for the day:

Matthew showing Nana previous stamps:

Stamp # 2:

The bikes:

The river we crossed:

Of course in our house sports are ever on-going, so they had to get some time in for football:

 

While they were playing around, Nana and I tested the playground.  This is Nana:

and Jack:

What camping trip would be complete without fishing.  They have these boats you can take out on the lake.  I thought it would be best to stay on land in case of an emergency (plus it was still freezing to me and the wind was blowing)

It was a fun but tiring trip, as you can tell here.  The boys fell asleep on the way home and it was only about 5:30 in the evening.

It really was a great trip and a very nice Thanksgiving.  I will have to admit, sleeping in the cold like that gave me a new perspective and true thankfulness for what we are blessed with.