Treehouse Camping

It has been about three weeks since I last posted on my blog and a lot has been going on! I had a great spring break with my grandparents, my mom went out of town to the Dallas Art Fair, my dad brewed beer, and after spring break we began learning our play about St. Francis in school. (This Friday, April 29th we will perform in the morning for the other grades children and that night we will perform for our families and then we will celebrate afterward with a potluck dinner.)

This weekend is Easter and last weekend we met our friends Linn and Sheppy for Treehouse Camping in northern Maryland. The cottages aren't really treehouses but are up high on stilts on a hill among the trees. Here's our cottage:


The first night we cooked our dinner on the campfire. The next morning we cooked on the wood burning stove. It rained like crazy the entire day on Saturday and we still had an awesome time. The wood stove kept our cottage warm during the day when we were tending the fire, but at night when we slept it got a little chilly because no one was awake to take care of the fire. I just started reading Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little House in the Big Woods again and our little cottage with the wood stove and bunks with mats to sleep on in our sleeping bags, reminded me a bit of some of the stories from the book and what it must have been like for Laura growing up.

We read, played games, drew pictures, and later in the afternoon we went into town to have ice cream and go to a flea market. It was raining so hard on our way to the flea market that we could hardly see to drive. My friend Sheppy bought me this awesome car and when we came out of the flea market, it had stopped raining for a few minutes and all the roads were flooded. Before we drove through the flood, Linn treated us to three fast driving donuts in her car in the parking lot! (That was one of my favorite things from the trip!)

As we headed back to the camp we came across a number of flooded bridges that we slowed down to drive through with big waves of muddy water splashing up around us. When we got back to the camp, the camp road seemed to be washing away so my daddy drove us up the hill but parked before our camp just to be safe. We watched the storm and walked down to the main road, which had turned into a river within about 1/2 an hour of our return. It was exciting and scary too because we heard there were tornado alerts. I've never seen so much rain all day long - it was crazy. Thank goodness we were dry and warm in our treehouse cottage.

On Sunday when we woke up it had finally stopped raining, the water seemed to have mostly disappeared but the road had really deep cracks in it. A tractor had come to work on rebuilding the road while we packed up and we had to go out of the campground in two separate directions because my mom's car was on one side of the deeply rutted road and Linn's car was on the other side. We made it out, headed into town for breakfast and none of the water that we drove through the night before was still there. Where did it go so quickly? On our way back to Pittsburgh that day it seemed like all the rivers were overflowing so I guess the water rushed to the rivers and then to the sea.

I had a great weekend with Shep.


While treehouse camping I developed new technique for triple roasting marshmallows . . . stay tuned!