Beaver Creek Valley State Park

 

 

 I did my first camping of the year, so I'm typing these up after the fact from Friday.  I went to this park once before, almost the same weekend in May of 2014 (I have photos on here from that trip too), and at the time I thought it would be a great park to bring kids here to play in the little stream.

 

 

 

 

 

  It was late once we got set up and in the tent so my gratitudes were brief....

#1 - We found Beaver Creek Valley state park finally, got here a bit late but all is well - no rain.

#2 - My friend was here first and found it ok and got all set up.

#3 - My niece has a positive attitude - helping with directions and getting all set up.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

#4 - Beaver Creek Valley is such a sweet little park - I'm reminded of this even though we arrived after dark and I look forward to seeing it in the light tomorrow.

 

#5 - Everyone is positive even though temps are cold (it got down to 32 F, 0 C in the early morning), no rain so we're fine, amazing stars.  We listened to a book on CD on the drive, Maniac Magee and my niece told me a detailed description of the book she's reading - Things Not Seen.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

P.S.   These were some cold temps at night, but it's so good to get outside early in the year.  During the day it felt perfect,  there are no bugs and having a campfire really serves a purpose.  My favorite story of the weekend was about the campfire.  We bring newspaper to start the one fire we have and the kids divide it up and try to keep the fire going as long as possible.

The next day they asked if they could have a match to start another fire.  Fires are a beautiful experience, but they also add a lot of carbon so we typically stick to one.  They had a big box of cardboard to burn from my friend's new tent so I told them it was fine.  They were doing this over at my friend's campsite and when I went over there later I saw a couple small logs in the fire.  "Where did you get these?" I asked.

"From the woods," they responded.  I then told them (I thought we'd talked about this) that you are not supposed to take logs from the woods (it's against the rules at state parks) because if everyone that camped there did that the woods would be stripped bare.  They are also an important part of the ecosystem.

 After that they wanted to go play at the big spring area which is in the first 3 photos.  My friend and her husband were on a walk so I told the kids they could go and I'd wait to tell my friend where they/we were.  

A little bit later my friend and her husband were back and we all headed down to catch up with the kids.  They hadn't gotten very far though.  My friend's kids were sitting at an empty campsite.  "We were walking along and someone left this campfire," one said.  I looked in the fire pit and there was a gigantic log still smouldering.  So they were waiting next to it, while my niece ran to fill up her water bottle to finish putting this fire out.

After that my disappointment with them taking a couple small logs from the woods was gone, I was so proud that they had learned a fire must be put out completely and were taking it upon themselves to do so when someone else hadn't.