Maiden Voyage of the Family Camper

I had work out in the Black Hills as usual this year, and Chris and the girls often join me when I do because we love that part of South Dakota. I also had work the following week in central North Dakota. So we decided to take a long loop out to Rocky Mountain National Park for the weekend in between. Since we bought a pop-up camper a few weeks ago we decided to give it a whirl on the trip. Addi has been asking to go camping since the beginning of May. We had a great time.

We camped the first night just outside of Badlands National Park, which was very cold. It was 31 when we woke up. Chris and the girls explored the park while I went to train seasonals. After a few days in the Hills, we drove over to the Rocky Mountains. The drive through Wyoming and northern Colorado was beautiful. Good for the soul to see so much wide open space with little development.

We had many picnics and a couple of campfires. Alexia and Addi loved roasting smores, but only Alexia ate any. Addi had just done a week of camping theme at daycare and was very serious about the instructions she had been given on how to roast a marshmallow. She sat there (pretty far from the fire) slowly turning her stick. :-) We did a hike to Atlanta Falls and Bear Lake, and Addi and I got a selfie with an Elk off of the bridge. There was lots of playing in the mountain streams and climbing on rocks. We took one day to drive all the way across the park to find Moose and see the tundra. We were a little early for the tundra wildflowers unfortunately and three was still a lot of snow up there. Not to mention that it snowed on us on our way back down the mountain. That was a pretty icy, treacherous drive. But we got some great looks at Elk, Moose and Yellow-bellied Marmots. We even got to see the cutest baby Moose and Mama ever. It was a LONG drive back to ND, but it was worth it. The sad part is that we never took a picture with our camper. Having too much fun I guess. :-)