Camping with the YW

One of my graduating YW LOVES to hike and camp. Her one request before she headed off to college was that we do a YW camping trip. Despite the fact that camping in August is really horribly hot and humid, how could we say no? And so we went camping. And despite the forecast calling for no rain, we got a DOWNPOUR. For HOURS. 

Dinner under the canopy that someone thankfully brought!

Catherine got to tag along because I'm an awesome mom.

Mandy guards the charcoal while Catherine watches

SO MUCH WATER.

It was literally pouring over the edge. 

Staying dry and playing some games

The rain made for a pretty lame evening (no smores, no hanging around the campfire until super late). It was just everyone to their tents. I got to sleep in Cate's Princess Tent, which is basically a popup canopy with walls. So you can stand up in it! And she had cots WITH toppers on them. I have never slept so well while camping. Also, we stayed extremely dry, unlike the YW... Character building, right?

The other fun event of the evening was the horrible noise of some animal dying that went on for HOURS in the middle of the night. I could not understand what would make such an awful noise. Later googling revealed it to be a barred owl. Gah.

The next day was beautiful and hot and humid. Thankfully we were hiking in a lovely shaded area, complete with a stream and waterfall. 

Eliza, Catherine & Elise

Eliza & Catherine

Catherine loves Eliza because she is tough and fun and hilarious.

Glad these two will be in YW together in January!

Made it to the top of the falls!

The Kraczeks brought some boys down and joined us for the hiking and tubing part of our adventure. Emily was kind and brought Seth along with her:

Adam, Seth, Benjamin

Eliza, Catherine & Jenny crossing one of the sketchy trails across the water

After hiking it was time to go tubing!

Girls heading down the Patapsco River

This was SO much fun! We floated the entire thing twice because we loved it so much. And we only lost one tube to some random barbed wire (the Patapsco River goes through Baltimore, so it has extra special things in it, like an entire car). 

This was also when I killed my car battery by trying to blow up all the tubes without turning my van completely on. Thankfully Julia knew how to jump a battery and the older YW were happy to drive it around for me to keep it from dying again. Lesson learned.

After tubing, we stopped for dinner at Chick-fil-a, which is always a favorite! 

For some reason we needed another photo by the water feature outside:

And then one with a random employee who asked to join our photo:

It was such a fun trip, despite all the random things that always happen on camping trips. I'm so grateful to be able to work with these awesome people, and so excited for Catherine to get to officially participate in a few months!