Our First Recorded Adventure

Our first adventure in this series took place from July 18, 2007 to July 20, 2007. We packed up all of our camping gear and headed for First Landing State Park in Virginia. Josh was the navigator for the trip, reading off the directions we printed out. It was supposed to be about a five and a half hour trip. Due to traffic and two accidents, it took us nearly ten hours. It was HOT and to save gas we were riding with the windows down. Half the time we were on the road, the van was sitting there in park with the engine turned off. Thankfully, a nice lady in an RV brought us some popsicles. It took over two hours to go just under two miles. We followed the directions printed out from Google. For some reason though, they lead us not to the park, but to someone's house. We stopped in someone's drive way to turn around and ask for real directions. He looked at what we had and laughed... it had lead to his house. So, he pointed us back in the right direction. We arrived at our campsite at about 5:30pm. We set up our tent and got out the necessary supplies to cook dinner.

We had gathered firewood at home and brought it with us. State parks don't like it if you burn their downed wood, it messes with the natural environment. I wasn't about to go buying firewood when there was plenty of it around here, so I got a box and brought it with us. Little did I know, you're not supposed to do that either. They will not frown to harshly though if you keep it in your vehicle and either burn it all or take it home with you. The problem is that the wood brought from other places introduces bugs and molds and other things not native to the area, which can quickly destroy the trees.

Anyway, we gathered a bit of leaves and pine needles off the ground and attempted to start a fire. After three packs of matches and a burned thumb from using my lighter multiple times, we got it going. We made hamburger foil packets. Those consist of a layer of cabbage, a layer of potato slices, and a hamburger patty topped with ketchup or whatever you want on it. They took a lot longer than I expected to cook. It was nearly 9pm by the time we actually ate dinner. We also had baked beans that burned on the bottom of the pot... which was not fun to scrub out. After cleaning up the dishes and packing all our food and stuff back into the van, we went to bed, it was nearly 11pm.

6:20 am the next morning, everyone is awake. We got up and put our bathing suits on. I really wanted coffee, so I wasted about an hour trying to start another fire and make coffee. Julie decided to roast marshmallows with her breakfast. She caught one on fire. Usually this isn't a problem, but when she blew it out, it fell off the skewer and onto her leg. She ended up with a row of blisters on her leg and on her hand where she grabbed at the marshmallow to get it off her leg. So, I cleaned her up and we headed for the beach. We got there at about 8:30 am or so. It was nice, we had most of the beach to ourselves.

Kailey had been saying that she was afraid to go in the ocean, but once we got there, she was fine. The beach was on the bay, so the waves were not as rough as on the Atlantic side. We had planned to build the world's biggest sandcastle, but somehow we ended up with just a really big hole. We just kept digging and digging and digging.

In the water, we saw all kinds of little fish. I caught one, but it was freaking out and swimming around so fast it was hard to even get a look at it, then it jumped out of the bucket. Josh kept going out further and further. He kept saying that he was going out to the currents. I told him that probably wasn't the best idea. Then they caught sight of something floating out a ways and didn't know what it was. So, I ended up swimming out almost to it and found that it was just a bouy.
About noon, the beach was getting crowded and we were getting hungry, so we packed up our stuff and headed back to the campsite for lunch. After lunch, we went out in search of burn cream for Julie's leg and some bug spray. We got both and went to play on the playground that was shaped like a pirate ship.

Then we took a much needed nap. About 5 pm, we started another fire for dinner. I set a pot of water to boil the potatoes... it took forever for it to finally boil, meanwhile thunder was threatening in the distance. Finally, the potatoes and chicken were ready and it was starting to rain. Thankfully it turned out to be little more than a light drizzle.

After cleaning up dinner, we went back out and got some icecream. On the way back, we stopped at the playground again for a bit and then went back to the campsite. We sat in the van for a bit and watched Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl, for the hundredth time and then went to bed.

In the morning, we got up and broke camp. We checked out and headed to find some breakfast. We stopped at a place called Waffletown, where I demonstrated how a spoon could be used as a simple catapult. (I'm sure the waitress appreciated that one...LOL) And we were off again, headed for Jamestown. That part of the adventure will be recorded in the next blog.