Your most memorable trip this summer

[rxcamping]

Well with summer coming to a close I thought I would start a thread sharing my most memorable trip and ask about yours since I enjoy reading about others camping experiences.

I have had lots of fun this summer and let me say it is hard picking the most memorable. I think if one had to win it would be the three days I spent with my boy in late may out at Fremont Lakes State Park in Nebraska. Fremont lakes has it all as far as water based activities. We had a great time canoeing, fishing and swimming. The most memorable part of the trip was the conversations we had by the campfire. Campfire conversations with five year olds tend to be very imaginative and never dull. We had a wonderful time and made some great memories together.

[17nut]

well its tough to say but I will go with the 4th of July weekend perfect weather, friends, family and forest. Hard to beat

[Smokey Mtn. Camper]

Great topic! Its real hard for me to pick. We were fortunate to go 6 times so far with at least one more planned. We had some great times and made some lifetime memories this summer but if I had to pick ONE, I would go with the Cades Cove trip where me and my 9 year old daughter took a 3 mile hike after dark.

The weather had been real stormy but the afternoon of the night we hiked, the skies cleared up and wind was just a lil breeze. That evening, the temps dropped to about 78 degrees with low humidity and as the sun set, the night sky was simply breath taking.

We entered the first part of our hike at the beginning of the 11 mile loop. We walked along that trail for about 1 mile before we took off down a service road through a beautiful pasture. It was absolutely magical. Once our eyes adjusted to the darkness, the only light we had was the red night vision of our headlamps. We had to wade through a small creek but nothing really dangerous other than watching for snakes. They love the night time.

Anyway, it was such a perfect evening that I am incapable of putting into words how special it was. The air was cool...it was so peaceful and quiet...the stars were so bright and so many. I showed my 9 year old the Milky Way for her first time. Just me and her, trapesing off into the darkness without a worry. As we neared the end of our magical hike, she put her arms around me and gave me a huge hug and said..."thanks for taking me camping dad". If I die tomarrow, I wll be able to take those memories with me. Without camping, I am not sure I would of ever had that special moment to share with my 9 year old.

We made it back to camp after 3 miles and 2.5 hours later to find my wife getting a bit concerned. She knows I am experienced and wasnt worried about getting lost she was worried about bears...she always is. It was past midnight by this time so me and Skye sat around the campfire and made us a couple of Smores before we bear proofed the campsite and called it a day.

During this same trip, we saw over 10 bears...4 coyotes...1 red fox...several deer, turkeys, raccoons, just to name some of the wildlife we were fortunate to witness. The weather was very rough but thats part of camping. Luckily, we are experienced at camping through southern thunderstorms so we made due and I am certainly glad we did. What memories.

We had other interesting trips but all in all, I would have to say that trip to Cades Cove has so far, been the trip of the summer.

[surmisez]

Our best trip just ended this past Tuesday. My husband and I had a great time even though it rained two nights and we had thunderstorms for a couple of hours on anther day, it was fabulous!

We hiked every day for hours, made great meals together, and sat around the campfire every night talking for hours.

When I said it was going to rain and we needed to put up tarps, he didn't agree with me, said the weatherman was wrong. But, he did it anyway, because it made me feel better and made me happy.

As he's always prone to say, "Happy wife, happy life." This is true.

We only had a three small puddles in our tent from water coming in the side (couple inches diameter at most). The tent we have is the Coleman Insta-tent. It does not come with a rain fly. So we had brought a tarp for just-in-case.

Other than that, the only rain trouble we had was not being able to sleep due to it pouring so hard on the tarp. It was worse than being in a house with a tin roof. :( We didn't think we'd ever get back to sleep, but eventually we drifted off.

Then the night we were scheduled to come home, it rained again. So we had to pack our wet tent, screen-house, and tarps, come home and set them up again to dry out.

Our tarps were a mess -- full of needles, dirt and whatnot. So we had to hose them down. We didn't have anymore yard left to dry them out on, so I came up with the idea of blowing them dry using our leaf blower. It worked really well. We were able to make the tarps bone dry and fold them up for storage. By the time we were done with that, the tent and screen-house were dry and could be taken down as well.

Even though this trip was a lot more work, it really was the most fun. The park was beautiful and the trails were great.

I'm hoping we can get one more trip in before the frosts start to hit.