Camping @ Kettle Moraine South Unit

This camping trip started slow, since we started getting ready Friday morning, but thankfully Kettle Moraine is not far at about an hour and half away. Our camping reservation was at the Whitewater Lake East Loop (which if you have similar reservation, you must check in at the "Contact Station" before going to you campsite--it doesn't say that anywhere, but that's what you have to do.) Below is what the sites looked like, or ours anyways, some were a little bigger, but most were about this size.

After setting up camp a little we went to Whitewater Lake to swim. The swimming area is small but nice providing sun and shade. We swam a little, and then laid out and read a little. When we headed back to camp we continued to set everything up...without a cloud insight we (and with my insistence) decided not to put the rainfly on to sleep with the breeze blowing through the tent. We started the campfire, and began cooking.

Hot ham and cheese
Sweet tomato rice

Some time after making dinner it started to sprinkle, so we scrambled to put the rainfly up...the rain actually stopped by the time we had everything up...I guess we should've just put it up from the beginning. Then we played Bananagrams. We also made several attempts at dessert, finally perfecting it. We used the pie iron to make tarts: raspberry cream cheese and peanut butter, chocolate, marshmallow. The tarts are made with crescent roll dough on each side, and need to watched while cooking to not over cook or under cook. No camp fire is the same so there is no real consistency, so just keep checking if you are making these yourself.

Sometime in the early morning hours it began to rain much harder, so I am so glad we had in fact gotten that rainfly up and on the tent.. No water in the tent so we just continued to sleep and sleep, finally waking up quite late in the morning, which felt great. We ate a little breakfast and walked down the street from our campsite to a scenic overlook.

After our short hike we decided to climb in the car and get a lay of the land, and took a drive along the Kettle Moraine Scenic Drive heading north. The Kettle Moraine area is absolutely beautiful!

When we got back, we got ready to go canoeing on Rice Lake (next to Whitewater Lake, and right down the road from our campsite). Rice Lake is great place to canoe, and may be a great place to swim too, but we didn't find the best area. We got out in a mucky area were I stepped on a fish (so gross!) and when we swam out there was tons of weeds. The water felt nice, but swimming was short lived. Here's a few pics of the lake...

That night for dinner we cooked in the pie iron again making "calzones" with bread, tomato paste, roast peppers, turkey pepperoni, and cheese. It was DE-licious!

After dinner, we played more Bananagrams, and Hubby read aloud to me by the fire.

This morning, we woke up and broke camp to head home. It was a great trip in a close but beautiful area. Great memories!

Camp Eats!

So I think we ate pretty well on this last camping trip and wanted to share with you our meals.

I know when camping it can be hard to think of meals to make that are nutritious and easy, so I hope this gives anyone looking for some good camp eats a few ideas.

Lunch Day One

PB & J
Corn Chips
Fruit

Dinner Day One

Sandwich shown above was made in our pie iron shown here.
Sandwiches, I call Mexi-Melts, were made with bread, turkey chili (no beans), shredded cheese, and green peppers.
Side of Spanish Rice made on the camp stove and cut up green peppers. Yummy!!

Lunch Day Two

Peanut butter tortillas
Spinach salad, cherry tomatoes, ranch and guacamole
Corn chips

Dinner Day Two

Quesadillas made over the fire with smoked salmon, shredded cheese and  spinach and a dab of guac

Day Two and Three Breakfast was vanilla yogurt and a banana.

I tried to plan meals that re-used some of the same ingredients like bread, tortillas, peanut butter, cheese, spinach, guacamole, etc, to cut down on the amount of food needed to be brought.

I hope this helps with planning your own yummy camping meals. Happy camping!!

Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore

This past weekend, hubby, pup and I packed up and headed to the Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore for a weekend of sun, sand and camping.

When we first got there we set up the campsite. If you are thinking about camping here, get there early; campsites are first come/first serve. We stayed in the Mather Loop at campsite M34. It was nice, but not overly roomy--if we'd had more people joining us it would have been tight--but we didn't so it was perfect. If you do have your choice of sites, I thought some of the sites along the back of the loop looked really nice, and many of the sites were much bigger. Here is our site, to give you an idea of where we stayed.

After setting up camp, we went to check out Mount Baldy on the far east side of the park. There are two ways to get to the beach from the parking lot; a short hike up and over a dune, or a little longer hike over some smaller dunes. 

Now, the trail head clearly says to only take the trail over the large dune if you are good shape--we took that trail, and are not in the best shape--don't be scared. A rest or two on the way up and anyone in decent condition will be fine. Here are a few pictures from the top of Mt. Baldy...

Looking straight out at Lake Michigan

And looking east at the beautiful power plant in Michigan City

Now to go back up the same dune to the parking lot is much more steep, but it is ultra fun to go down!

Steep!

After climbing (and descending) Mt. Baldy, we walked along the beach heading west, and waded in the cold water of Michigan. 

Pup's first time in waves!

Looking down the beach

After walking for a while we took the trail through the woods back to the parking lot--it was really pretty!!

After that we hit up an incredibly crazy junk store (on the corner of second and central, if you are interested...it's a pickers paradise), brought some firewood, and spent the rest of the night playing Bananagrams, cooking and hanging out by our campfire.

Day Two started with a nice drive along Lakeshore Drive and eventually ending up at Central Beach. We swam around in the lake with puppy and then took a catnap in the sand; the weather was perfect and we were able to find a secluded spot and it kinda felt like a private beach.

Central Beach

My sandy Puppy Girl!

After hanging out at the beach for a while we started to feel a little thirsty and a little burny, so we decided to head back to the campsite for lunch. After hanging out there for a bit we went to Portage Lakefront and Riverwalk. While there are no dogs allowed on the actually beach, we enjoyed walking on the trail to the beach (paved so it's good for strollers and wheelchairs too) and out onto pier.

Trail to the beach

Portage Lakefront and Riverwalk Pavilion

Beachfront

"Riverwalk" Pier

After our walk back to the car I realized how tired, and hungry I was. We headed back to our campsite once again to start a fire and cook some dinner. After dinner, we played more Bananagrams and hung out around the campfire.

Sunday morning we woke up, broke camp, and headed home. It was an awesome trip! And I would recommend the Indiana Dunes to anyone--especially those in the Chicagoland region--as a quick, fun, inexpensive way to enjoy Lake Michigan's beaches.

Ridiculously Proud of My Swimmer Dog

#28 Put Away Camping Gear, #100 Add Handles to Camping Gear Storage and #3 Make Summer Camping Reservations

Only a few more weeks of the Lenten season, and we're still marking projects off the list!

#28 was to Put Away Camping Gear. We actually organized this area of our basement really well in the fall too. When we renovated our kitchen in the Spring of 2009, we moved some of the old cabinets into the basement. These cabinets now hold laundry supplies, tools and camping gear. In addition we are using some of the furniture I've had since I was 4 years old to hold camping gear. Both the re-purposed cabinets and kid shelves and drawers are perfect for this kind of storage. And even though we haven't used any of the camping gear since last fall, we were generously given a lot of great camping gear for Christmas. While the new gear had previously been corralled to the basement, it now has a permanent home with the other camping gear.

At the same time we completed #100 Add Handles to Camping Gear Storage. When we got my old childhood furniture from my mom, the first thing my Hubby did was paint it. And while it looks much better, some of the drawers now stick from being painted and living in the humid basement. Easy fix, we added inexpensive 4" drawer handles today, and now the drawers work just fine!!

After the organizing of the camping gear, it seemed fitting to do #3 Make Summer Camping Reservations. We are now planning a trip to the Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore (which we learned actually does not take reservations) and to Mirror Lake Wisconsin State Park. We decided that while we hopefully will do more camping than this it is difficult to make reservations too far into the future, since stuff always seems to pop up. But I am not uber excited for these two trips!!!