Gypsy Village at Hartman

After more than a year of tentative planning Brad and I finally got the kids out on a camping trip and it was really enjoyable for everyone. We had a mid week Tuesday to Thursday excursion at Hartman Creek State park. The weather was cool and dry which meant no swimming but also no bugs. Given the midweek nature of the adventure we even had the place pretty much to our selves, with the exception of the ghost sites that were just empty tents holding sites for the holiday weekend. All of the kids were very well behaved to the point were we are already planning to do it again. We even got the whole troupe down for a nap, and to bed relatively early. The park had a nice set of asphalt loops for the older kids to ride their bikes on and our site was large enough for everyone to play soccer on. The kids spent much of their time hunting/trapping chipmunks. The older ones initially tried throwing logs at the furry-tailed rats and then eventually decided building traps was the way to go. This was actually less successful than assumed as the two youngest kept eating the peanuts that were left for bait. We did a couple of long hikes each day and the collective herd was way too noisy to see even song birds but Ole did manage to foul up the woods just the same. Hiking and fishing during the day, and smores and campfires at night. Wednesday night we let the oldest ones stay up to see the fearless coons that came within feet of us to eat the ground waste that accumulates with five little ones snack/grazing all day. We tried to incorporate some of the local history and botany on the hikes between the current plants in bloom and the informational sign posts along the hiking trails, even managed to visit a restored Norwegian home that was on site. The next trip is coming shortly and we are thinking Buckhorn or roche-A-Cri, no sense doing the same park twice the state is too pretty to do that.