It was Friday afternoon and our plans for the weekend were changed and we now had some free time on Saturday. I got a wild hare idea to try and pull off a camping trip at the last minute. Since we didn't have a tent big enough for the family, Samantha and I ran to the store and bought a tent and everything else we needed for the trip. I was even feeling good about remembering to plug in our trusty lantern to be charged while we were busy getting ready. Lincoln arrived home as soon as possible, but even working at turbo speed we weren't able to get on the road until a little after 6 p.m. We knew we would be fighting daylight since Turner Falls was a good 2 hour drive. Unfortunately, their was a major traffic accident that slowed us down even more.
We finally arrived right after the all light had disappeared. We picked our campsite in the dark and then Lincoln went to work on setting up the tent. Our trusty lantern that I was feeling so good about charging wasn't working and we only had one other flashlight. We ended up shining the car lights on the tent as Lincoln tried his best to assemble it for the first time in the dark. We are lucky to have such a smart dad because somehow despite the lack of light he managed to get it set up after some time. The only problem was that it took Samantha and I the whole time Lincoln was setting up to get the fire going. We realized after the tent was set up that the smoke from the fire would be blowing directly into the tent all night. We decided to move the tent, but since we didn't have much light the only place we could find big enough was on top of two very large rocks on a bit of an incline. We were so tired at that point that we just left the tent hoping our air mattresses would make it bearable to sleep. Originally, we had planned on having smores and playing games in the tent before bed, but it was SO late by the time we got everything set up so we decided to call it a night. Samantha and Courtney were able to fall asleep quickly, but Alyssa had taken an evening nap on our way up and was very aware of every sound outside. Then we had another late arriver at the campsite across from us who stayed up until 4 in the morning and who frequently shined their headlights directly on our tent.
The next day turned out to be far better than the night before. We enjoyed roasting bagels for breakfast and had smores for our morning dessert. When Lincoln was throwing our the trash he saw 3 raccoons in the garbage and all of us were able to check them out. I think this was the first time the girls had seen raccoons. We then headed down to the falls and had the best day ever. We enjoyed swimming and hiking. There are several caves at Turner Falls. We had hiked to one on a previous visit and hadn't been that impressed so we decided to try a different cave that was behind the falls. It ended up being a great hike with a good little cave and quite the view. We have some great pictures from the falls and hike, but I will have to post them later since those were on a disposable waterproof camera. After the hike we enjoyed swimming more and then had our picnic lunch on the creek runoff. They have some great rocks that the kids can slide down all along the runoff. Even with our rocky beginning this ended up being a great trip!
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