Category: Vacation

The Backpacking Princess

While we were on our backpacking trip, Megan having a hard time keeping up. So I told her, if she could keep up with me, I would tell her a story. I started it, and for the rest of the trip we made up more of it. Unfortunately, we can’t remember the whole story, but here is what we do remember.

The Backpacking Princess

Backpacking princess

One upon a time a little princess was born. Her mommy and daddy named her the wrong thing! They named her Louretta. One day her fairy Godmother came over and said, “What’s with her name? She should have been named The Backpacking Princess.”

One day when she was about five, her carriage broke down on her way to her grandparent’s house. She needed to get out and walk for two miles in the woods to get help from Little Red Riding Hood. She found she enjoyed hiking so much that she wanted to do it all the time. And so her mommy and daddy took her backpacking lots. Everyone remembered what her fairy Godmother had said and soon no one called her “Louretta” anymore.

Then she was sixteen she went backpacking by herself one day and came across a huge, mean Dragon. It said, “Yummy a Princess! She can cook her backpacking meals for me and when they are gone, I can eat her!”

So he took her to his cave and made her cook all her food, the rice breakfasts, the jerky lunches, the yummy dehydrated chili dinners and even the Upside Down cake. She was not very happy with him. When she ran out of food the dragon giggled and flew off to get wood for a princess roast fire.

The backpacking princess cried because she wanted to see her mommy and daddy again. Then she made plans. It was winter and there were lots of big icicles in the mouth of the cave. She tiptoed to one and broke it off. She waited for the dragon.

He came and she sprang, stabbing him in the chest. The ice melted and the dragon fell dead and so the Backpacking princess got back home.

One day, years later, she was hiking in the mountains and a great big, ugly, ogre grabbed her.  “Ho ho ho!” He said. “A princess! She will make a nice dessert.” (Roast princess is a delicacy among monsters) He took her to a cave and locked her in a cage. He started a fire and got ready to roast her.

Meanwhile, in another part of the forest, Prince Forest Ranger was walking when he smelled smoke. Now because it was so dry there he decided to check it out. He found it coming from a cave in the side of a mountain. He walked in to tell the camper to put it out but it was an ogre who would not.

“Put it out or I will.”

The ogre hit him over the head with a huge branch. But the prince was wearing a hat made for just that occasion. “It’s not nice to hit people on the head.”

The Ogre hit him again so the prince kicked him in the shins. “Stop that!”

The ogre fell into a trapdoor in his cave and fell down the mountain.  Prince Forest Ranger ran over to the cage The Backpacking Princess was in and asked if she was ok.

“Yes. Can you get me out?”

The prince attempted to unlock it with his knife but it did not work. “I already tried, it looks easier on TV.”

“I am going to get my brother, He is a locksmith.”

“Is he really? What’s his name?”

“Shh.” The Prince ordered as he walked to the end of the cave with his radio. “This is Prince Forest Ranger, I need my brother, Prince Locksmith. I am halfway up Beech Mount, in a cave. A ogre has a princess locked in a cage.”

“Rodger, Rodger will bring him in helicopter.”

“Thank you.”

The two sat and talked as the waited and found they had a lot in common. The helicopter landed and the princess was freed. The backpacking Princess and Prince Forest Ranger got married and lived happily ever after, right?

No, not quite, you see while they were hiking during their honeymoon, the prince heard a snarl in the rocks in front of them. The Princess screamed and the prince felt claws digging into his back. He spun and fell, looking up into the hard green eyes of a giant mountain lion. He struggled but could not escape. He heard a clanging. And a scream.

“Get off of my husband!”

The lion looked up and got the Backpacking Princess’ lightweight cooking pot in his face. He rolled over to claw at her which allowed the prince to draw his bushcraft sword and chop the creature’s head off.

Then they continued on their trip and lived happily ever after.

The moral of this story is, when you are hiking in Faerie Land, always bring at least one cast iron pot.

 

Backpacking

HikingWe went backpacking while we were in Colorado.  While we were hiking up, there were lots of rocks we could hike up on to see the mountains.  We were able to camp in two different places and do some exploring.

While it was a lot of fun backpacking with everyone, I would love to go hiking just with Daddy.  We had to stick to easier trails because not everyone could do the more difficult ones.  The last time we hiked, I had a medium size pack and had trouble carrying it.  Now I have a big pack and am able to carry it easily even with all the heavier stuff I got to carry.

I like backpacking and hope to do it more often!

Lake Ann- Fun

markfightnight
Can you find me? This is a picture from “Fight Night”

Last week I went to Lake Ann camp, I had fun.

Every year they have a basic plan that stays the same.  You know you will have fight night, paint ball, high adventure and the challenge course.  But you don’t know the activities or what you will do for the different courses.  I look forward to it every year. Depending on your team, and the activities, it can be difficult.  This year if we had tried the wall, we would not have been able to do it, but last year it was really easy. I think, if we had put our mind to it last year, we could have done anything.  This year, it seemed like one or two people messed it up by not listening.  I did not know how to encourage them differently.

Fight night was on Tuesday. We all went down to the ring with our teams and tried to win imaginative games. Another thing we did was yell ourselves hoarse. There are about twenty people per team, normally a boy cabin with their sister cabin. There were about eight teams.

For Fight Night we earned an insane number of points for completing the challenges and then even more for winning them. In one of the activities, a counselor had his face covered with shaving cream and we attempted to get fruit loops to stick on it. The last activity we were given three beach balls and needed to get them from point A to point B using only our heads while we were being hosed down. We got second place…. but only if it was backwards day.

One of my favorite activities was climbing the tower that was about 40 feet tall.  I climbed on the second hardest side and got up really quick. If you get to the top you get to sign your name and then rappel down. They said if you were timid, to walk down, or you could bounce down.  It was a lot of fun bouncing down the side! I wish I could have gone twice just to rappel down again.

I also really enjoyed paint ball. We tied for first place! Because we got first, we got our picture taken with a golden paint ball gun, but I don’t have that picture.  Afterwards everyone was showing off their bruises from the paint balls. Unfortunately since I got hit in the face mask, I did not get any bruises, but I did get a bad taste in mouth until I spit it out. Paint balls taste like cod liver oil 😉 I also had a white mask.

It was a good year, even with the problems.  My counselor, John John, was very good. He did a very good job trying to get us to pay attention. He offered to go on a 5K run with us one morning if we were up early.  He was also very good at soccaball and soccer.  I hope to see him again next year!

Thank you Lake Ann Camp for permission to use this picture on my blog!

Swaziland October 13-17

We are here! We stayed in South Africa the first night then we drove to Swaziland. We stopped at a gas station that had some animals behind it.

When we got to Swaziland we went to a glass factory. They had peacocks and weaver birds that I took some pictures of.

On the 17th Opa and I went to the transmitter site. I will probably write longer blogs later when I am more on the right schedule.

Greer Spring

springBefore we went home we went to another spring called Greer Spring.

It was a different type of spring, this one instead of coming out of the ground, came out of a cliff. We had to climb down a bunch of stairs to get to it.

That was a nice walk too but getting back to the car was a lot more difficult.

Use bug spray here too because the mosquitoes were terrible.

We went to some other springs and passed more but Boze Mill Spring and Greer Spring were my favorite.

Boze Mill

SpringsOn our last day, we camped at a camp called Boze Mill.

The camp was named after a mill that was there a long time ago. The remains of the mill can be seen after a short walk.  If you go a little further you can see the spring where all the water comes from.  The walk is very pretty but you NEED TO BRING BUG SPRAY!!!!! There are 4 types of ticks and all of them are very VERY common.

Even though we found more ticks that day then we found snakes the rest of the week, we had a good day and also had fun taking pictures of the mill and the very blue spring.

Bug

While we were in Colorado last year, we went to Uncle Bill’s house. He had parked his car by the windmill and with the mountain in the background, I thought it looked neat.  I asked Momma for her camera and got a picture of it.

The original wasn’t very good.It was a little too dark for the camera so the picture was gritty and a little blurry. If I had a tripod, it would have been better. This week Mommy has been practicing her “computer magic” and fixed the picture to look like this.

Bug

Donuts

On our trip to Canada to visit cousins and go to a wedding we went to Tim Hortons.  It is a donut shop. We went there because I said I remember the snow and the donuts from last time we went to Canada (almost 3 years ago). We got kinds of donuts I never remember having before. They were good, especially the maple flavored ones.

Megan liked the cream filled ones and the ones with frosting–which was just about all she ate! Andrea and I liked the maple and the honey ones the best.  Daddy, Momma and Adrian liked the maple ones best.

 

Hula Hoop Contest

When we were at the Kalahari,  Daddy treated us to a restaurant called The Reserve.  They had contests, like picture drawing. Everyone got a prize.

There was also a Limbo Contest.  Megan would have been good at it if she wold not go on her hands.

There was a Hula Hoop Contest. Audrey and I tied, so we had to have a tie breaker. I won and Audrey got second place!  The prize was a “game card” for the “noisy-obnoxious-why-do-they- have- it” arcade and a cows tail. We did bowling for the game. It was the only thing that was not noisy or obnoxious and it was the one thing we were allowed to do. It was fun.