Camping: part one

We went camping for the first time as a family! Like really camping, not in someone's backyard. We went with a wonderful family from church who are avid campers and could show us the ropes. They have 6 kids and know what they are doing! The place we went was gorgeous! Lamington National Park is two hours south of Brisbane and up in the mountains. Get this! There were these miniature wallabies on the campsite! They looked more like large possums that hopped around. We ARE in Australia!


We went up Thursday with intentions of staying until Saturday, depending upon the weather. Thursday was absolutely gorgeous! Here's our big ol' tent! Our friends were clever to have several smaller tents for the kids to share and set up themselves. It took us as long to get ours up as it did all their little ones. Hmm, good to keep in mind.


After setting up camp and eating lunch we went exploring. Just up the road was a visitor's center where a lady told us all about nests and snake skins and cool stuff like that!


Nearby was a neat bird feeding area. Gorgeous birds!


Isaac got one to land on him!


Evelyn was content to chase the wild turkeys.


From there we took a lovely little hike. And saw cool trees like this booyong.


And this cool twisty vine (whose name I forgot).


And this amazing strangling fig that grows itself around the trunk of a tree and "strangles" it until it dies and decays and all that is left is a hollow looking tree! Totally cool!



That's the inside!


And we got to climb this bridge up into the trees.


And if you weren't squeamish about heights you could climb THIS ladder up a crazy tall tree! Isaac was fearless!


What a fun hike! Then it was back to camp for dinner. Our only complaint of the campsite was we couldn't have fires. Luckily our friends had a gas stove where we could cook and even do s'mores, so it wasn't a total loss. Here is Ashlee, 13 yr old babysitter/Lydia's piano teacher/big sister for the weekend. As the one girl with 5 brothers, she and Lydia were inseparable. It looks like she was trying to make the water boil faster by shining her flashlight on it. You can also see the boys in the background playing football.


After s'mores it was time for hunkering down in the tents in our sleeping bags! Ooh! What fun! I wish I'd gotten a picture of the kids, but I thought of that only after I was happily in my own sleeping bag and I couldn't quite make myself get up. It was lovely listening to the wind and the frogs as we fell asleep. What a great day!