I grew up not being a nature kind of gal, wasn’t raised around it so never cared much for it. Again, here comes another instance where my boyfriend opened me up to something new, camping. From the little that I knew, camping had to do with tents set up in the wilderness. No real opinion on it.
We absolutely love doing family activities whether it be with just us or our families. Camping was something he kept talking about and pushed so we decided to make it happen and even asked my brother with his family and of course, my parents to join. The wonderful boyfriend I have grew up in Pennsylvania where he liked all the outdoorsy stuff, so he wanted to do it all natural; no cabins, no electricity, no showers, no wifi, no food unless we made it and the list goes on. We weren’t going to agree o all those terms!
We all agreed that, yes we would be in tents and sleep outside with whatever creatures may or may not kill us while we sleep, but there had to be showers. The boyfriend looked into places where we could go camping, we wanted to be semi-far where it wouldn’t feel like we were in the city, but not more then 3 hours away.
The research to look for the perfect campsite was hard! Nowhere were we able to find a site that had not only information about the campsites, but PICTURES! No website had pictures which was weird because why wouldn’t they sell their campsite with pictures? Regardless, we honed down on Tobyhanna, Pennsylvania.
We made a stop to Dick’s Sporting Goods to get all the essentials; tent, sleeping bags, fishing poles and all the good stuff that comes with fishing.
My parents the over-packers they are because any day could be an emergency they packed food for a week! So they technically took care of 80% of the food, my brother took care of the essentials for s’mores, hot chocolate and buns for the hamburger and hotdogs. We took care of breakfast because that’s my boyfriends thing. Also, while out in the wilderness you’re going to need pots, pans, and/or griddle, we purchased a griddle for $30 on Amazon to make our eggs, pancakes, bacon and even toast! One other thing we purchased on Amazon was a Queen-sized mattress that came with a pump, but let’s just say air mattresses suck because that uncomfortable piece of crap we slept on was not QUEEN!
The trip to Tobyhanna took about 3 hours. What was good about the location was that it was 10 minutes away from Walmart just in case we had to run out and get any essentials like garbage bags and ice. The campsite was not something we expected either, we didn’t think we’d be so close to other campsites. I envisioned being surrounded by trees, branches, rocks and creepy crawlers, but that wasn’t the case. Each campsite was about 25 feet next to eachother and that’s probably stretching it! Some of the activities you could do while there besides eat and sleep was; fish, boating, paddle boating, biking and hiking! I don’t even want to get into our hiking experience! There were apparently four different trails; two difficult and two easy. We thought we picked the easiest trail, but don’t think we did, because after 45 minutes I gave up and called my daddy to pick me up!
Our overall experience was great for those two days that we stayed. My boyfriend used his Boy Scout skills to make fire for breakfast, dinner and s’mores. My mom whipped out her yummy marinated chicken wings, while my brother had the s’mores all ready for everyone to dive in and dog down.
Of course who would I be if I didn’t record and take photos of our experience?
Being a scary bear–
My boyfriend made his own chair :p
And for a hint– when we rented a boat we got no fish, but here when we just stood by the lake we got about 4 fishes!
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