Camping/Four-Wheeling

I’ll be taking over the blog duties today.  Erin and I just returned from a camping trip this past weekend.  We headed out to Apalachicola National Forest.  We missed church; you’ll have to blame me for that one, but we had a great time enjoying the outdoors we are blessed with.  Titus came along and was a great companion for the most part.  We slept in a tent and cooked all our meals over a fire; we did great considering we forgot to bring eating utensils.

     

Hiking, four-wheeling, cooking, and of course sleeping in took up all the time we had.  We arrived on a Friday evening, found the trailhead for the ATV’s, then found a place to camp at William’s Landing.  The first night we met some “snowbirds” making their annual stop at this campground; one of the older gentlemen was an exceptional guitar player and singer, so we had some entertainment while we cooked our aluminum foil potatoes.

Saturday morning we went out to the trailhead at Silver Lake and took off.  Titus stayed behind in the truck and we came back every hour to check on him etc.  We ran into very few people and the forest was gorgeous.  The trails were very fun with some areas where you could go extremely fast (good thing our ATV’s are relatively underpowered) and others where you needed a canoe.  In fact, in all my wisdom I got stuck in one of these lake-sized mosquito-infested flooded areas and had to get off the ATV and start pushing.  I was up to my knees in water; when E came out to help she found the deepest spot and fell in all the way to her shoulders.  It was very funny for me, but I don’t think E laughed until we were back at the campsite and had showered.

I forgot to mention; in between our riding sessions we would come back and check on Titus.  One of these times I had no water so I gave him some blue gatorade, probably not good for your dog, but it was funny.  Check out his tongue:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lDpHaaFPL3Q&feature=channel

    

That took us all the way to the afternoon, and once we were cleaned up we drove to some foot trails on the state side of the forest.  We headed out on the 2.9 mile trail with a good 2-3 hours of sunlight left.  Titus did great, and was walking along with us, hopping over fallen trees, and crossing bridges with no problems.  Everything was fine until we noticed the sun descending below the tree line.  Yup, we emerged from the forest at dark…but we weren’t worried, not at all!  Also, here is a video of Titus doing an exceptional job of walking with us.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KWthDVsl2cw&feature=channel

    

The next morning we went to a different trailhead and swore to ourselves that we wouldn’t get as wet this time around.  It went according to plan until near the end of the trail where once again I underestimated how deep some water was…but we didn’t get stuck that time!

    

So after packing up, and thanking God for watching over us, we headed home exhausted and ready to unload.  In the midst of unloading we had a new surprise…ticks!  Erin had five and I had three…Titus only had one, lucky guy.  So after that horrific experience I may be hard pressed to convince E to go camping with me again…ever.

So that’s that, it was a great weekend.  We thank God for good weather and safe travel, and to our family we love you all and hope to see you soon.  For videos of our experiences click on the links below.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_WE5GJw3ZCg&feature=channel_page
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-GHxpkYwZLQ&feature=channel_page
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DDyyfjhTUkg&feature=channel_page
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pUr8arY1eko&feature=channel_page
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EPcVhxdzciU&feature=channel_page
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VnmISYBkBhM&feature=channel

T&E