"Spring Break"

Our Spring Break was certainly an interesting one. This is kinda a long post, but definitely documentation worthy! First of all, I'm a grown up in the work world, so I still had to work 2 shifts and had requested PTO since it was Colby's real Spring Break and mine from school as well. Oh, those college days when it was a real week off! :) We had been planning for several months to go camping. We LOVE to camp! And no offense to all you car campers out there, I love me some smore's and gathering around the campfire with good friends when you're expecting it. But we love to backpack and primitive camp where we can hike in and essentially are far away from any people at all. It is such an amazing feeling being out in God's beautiful creation and having all the 'essentials' you could possibly need on your back. I love spending time with Colby in his element, wearing the same clothes for several days, filtering drinking water out of a stream, seeing the beautiful sky at night, and being able to simply notice everything around you because you aren't distracted by all the junk we fill our schedules with. Rocky also loves to go with us out on the trail and he even has his backpack, as you can see by the permanent picture on the right of him from a previous trip.

So, we were all packed up and ready to go the next morning after I got home from the hospital, when I got the phone call from my mom on the way into work that my grandpa had passed away. This is on my dad's side of the family in Kansas. They weren't sure when the funeral would be, but were thinking Friday. We were originally planning to go to the Ouachita National Forrest in Arkansas for our trip, and so we figured the least we could do was camp a few days in Oklahoma on our way up to Kansas. We found the Chickasaw National area and had read about primitive camp sights as well as a hiking trail, so we figured perfect! Well, when time we got there it was early afternoon and it turns out that it was more of a state park. Still trying to be optimistic, we stopped at the park ranger's station to get information and she suggested that we go to one of the walk-in camping sites that would make us feel a little more in the woods. Negative, not only was it 30 feet from the car, but we also shared it with at least 200 other people in their air conditioned RV's with their screaming kids, barking dogs, and none other than a campsite host that drove a golf cart around checking that everyone was following the rules. So we tried to make the most of it and went on our own little hike and were "roughing" it compared to everyone else, but still not what we had expected.

Here I am exhausted from our "walk-in" site, and yes that's our car out in front

Our Camp Host...aka and older retired couple that drives around regulating campsites on their downtime, they actually made us move our tent so that it was precisely on the gravel (ouch) and not killing the vegetation. Umm..so much for being 'one' with nature!

Yikes, ok, well maybe the next night would be better. We set off the next morning toward Tulsa and we had to stop into town to do a little shopping since they had decided to do a Wake as well and we hadn't brought more than one nice outfit for the weekend. We had located camp Wa-Sha-She in northern OK that also had similar "ammenities" listed as well as a lake and we thought it would be promising. So by the time we finished shopping and eating it was getting late and we needed to find the place so we could set up camp and still have some time to explore. We type it in on the GPS and are nearly there. We make the last left turn where the map indicates and we are in a Trailer Park. Yep, you read that correctly. It was a trailer park that happened to be named after the real camping area, but the real site was located another hour away and it was already dark and there's no telling whether we could actually get to the natural area since some close after dark.  So, now we are left with very few options. About the same time, Colby's phone rings and it was one of his friends from Baylor. Miranda called since Colby had left a message earlier in the day to giver her a shout out that we were going to be close to her home town. He was really surprised to get the call since she is an archaeologist and is often out of country for digs. Well, not only was she in the country, but she was also at home at her parents house in Owasso, OK!! We were only about 30 minutes from there and they graciously let us stay in their "inn" for the night. Whoohoo, showers and a bed! It was great to see Miranda and her family and she even took us to the gun range the following morning and we got to practice our marksmenship...goodness those guns can kick, I've never experienced that before!

Colby is hardcore!

Colby and Mo!

The remainder of the weekend was time spent with my grandma, aunts/uncles, and many many cousins (most that Colby hadn't met before) and it was good to be able to spend time together and celebrate my Grandpa's life, as he was an amazing man of God and was always great at making me laugh. Some of my favorite memories with him are swinging on the porch swing, riding his horse Colt, and him taking us out to see the buffalo in the pastures outside of town. We definitely don't make it up there to see everyone very often and so all in all the week ended up being a great time to spend with family and I don't think we will every forget this crazy camping adventure!