Camping With The Boys!

I’ve been a little MIA lately so I figured I would post a quick update on the things I’ve been up to….starting with a good ol’ fashioned camping trip!

At the end of August Josh and I took the furry children on a camping trip to Cupsuptic Lake Campground in the Rangely region of Maine.  Neither of us had been up there before, and we were looking to do some remote camping.  It was a fairly short minute trip, as we made arrangements the week we left.

One of the things that really drew us to this particular campground was that we were camping remotely, which meant that we weren’t within the main campground, which also meant we were isolated from other people for the two days of our trip.  While that may sound relatively extreme for most “glampers” out there, this was exactly what we were looking for (cue Warren Zevon’s “Splendid Isolation”).  In order to get to our site, we had to either canoe across the lake to our site, or drive around the lake to a parking lot and hike in with all of our gear, about a 1.5 mile trek.

We decide to canoe it…which proved to be quite a daunting task with two dogs who had never been in a boat before plus all of our gear!!  Luckily, our gear hitched a ride with one of the managers of the campground, who was headed to our site to do a quick check of the grounds.

With all of us in our life jackets, including Bob and Tekayo (safety first!!), we hopped in the canoe and began our paddle across the lake.  Since it was fairly early in the day, the lake was still very calm as we didn’t run into too many boaters.  The boys were a little on edge and not really too keen on the boat, but once we were in the middle of the lake and they came to the realization that they couldn’t really go anywhere else, they were ok, haha.

It took about 45 minutes to cross the lake, and once there we began to set up camp.  Since we were so isolated and the weather forecast was sunny and clear, I set up our tent and decided against using the rainfly, which was a FANTASTIC decision as we slept under the stars and the big pine trees, but didn’t have to worry about the bugs.  Once that was done, I took our 5 liter sack o’ wine (cabernet) out of the cooler, poured ourselves two nice big tumblers and headed down to our small dock to enjoy the water.  Who says you can’t rough it in style?!  Haha!

The lake was probably one of the cleanest lakes I’ve ever been in.  It was quite pebbly, but definitely not murky and not mucky, it was so clear you could see your feet in chest deep water!  It was also nice to be so far away from people, that you could swim in your birthday suit and no one would know….not that we did that or anything…

Josh took an early morning canoe ride the next morning to watch the sunrise and got some amazing pictures that made me so sad I missed it!  Look at this picture, it’s so crazy beautiful!  We couldn’t both go because we would have had to load the dogs in the canoe since they weren’t super cooperative the day before, plus I was apparently in a pretty deep sleep as I didn’t even hear the dogs whining when he paddled out into the lake without them!

Later in the day we hiked out to the parking lot as we had decided that the following day Josh would canoe back to the car with our gear and meet me and the boys at the parking lot.

We spent about half the hike in the woods, and the other half walking through a field full of wildflowers and goldenrod.  I really can say that between the woods the fields and the water and the mountains we had one of the scenic trips within a 2 mile radius of our campsite.  It was so neat to be able to see so many beautiful settings.

One of my favorite things about camping is how such simple food could taste so good!  Josh is an expert campfire chef, and made sure to pack some delicious and easy meals that we could do over campfire.  Hot crab sandwiches with corn on the cob and toast with strawberry jam and butter consisted of our first evening meal and snack.  Breakfast the following morning was granola and wild blueberries and cowboy-style coffee.  The day rounded out with coconut shrimp and steamed veggies for lunch and a nice swordfish steak with rice and steamed veggies for dinner.  Plus, more wine, because you can’t really have too much of that, right?

Sunday morning we packed up and headed our separate ways back, Josh in the canoe with the gear and me and the dogs on the trail.  I wish we had spent another night or two there, because we had such great weather and it was really so nice to spend some solo time together…we don’t get to do that enough given our current living arrangement.

When Josh met us at the parking lot with the car, he came across two very exhausted and sleepy dogs!  I snapped this picture shortly before he arrived.  They were so tuckered out, and barely made a peep on the two hour ride back to Rockland!

I love these mini vacations!!  Do you have any memories from great camping trips like this?  I’d love to hear about them!