Welfare Cornpie

I discovered this weekend that I now have a hippie grand-daughter. Or at least a wanna be. It seems her father purchased her a headband and upon putting it on declared that she is now a hippie. We had a little fun with her when she announced her hippie name was Marigold Moonflower (I think). We were warned however that this hippie had a "dark side".

I did have some worries about taking 3 kid camping. I wondered how I would amuse them for 2 days but my worries were none as they did great. I was amazed at how well they behaved and that I only had to step in once to stop a short lived argument. The good thing is, they all still get along good. The sad thing is that I know this won't last forever. By next year there could be some issues with spending that much time together. Until then I will take what I can get.

The park itself was nice. Funny that less then 1 mile away was a fully stocked BP gas station, but the park itself was quite and private. The rangers are of a different breed from where we've visited before. Maybe you could classify them as "high end Rangers". They were all older then the normal rookie Rangers we see at other parks. I came to the conclusion that they place the older, ready for retirement, Rangers at the less maintenance Parks and stick the rookies at the high maintenance parks. Kind of equal to a Police Officer close to retirement that gets a desk job.
We also usually stake camp close to a bathroom, whether it be pit toilets or flushers. This time all we had to go by was a park map, so back in February we booked what we though were sites close to a bathroom. They were close if you took the path through the woods. We were slightly downhill from the bathrooms so either way you went, path or road, you ended up walking uphill on the way back. I tried the path at 4am and was a little nervous about creatures popping out at me but then realized that this area was a little less rural then we are used to. I'm sure the raccoons had little condo's set up somewhere, but we never saw evidence of them the entire weekend. All in all the trip was good.

Yesterday was also a bit of a sad day. It marked one year since the passing of brother David. I think about him a lot and miss him terribly, but yesterday the thoughts were a little different. They say the hurt eventually goes away, I say it takes more than a year for sure. We took his girls to the spot they chose to lay their dad to rest and spent some time remembering his life and had some laughs and of course a good cry. In honor of him we ordered pizza from the place he worked and I then realized how much I'd go through for a sibling. I still don't like their pizza!