Camping at Gold Head Branch State Park

I scheduled a spur-of-the-moment trip to Gold Head Branch State Park (about 2 1/2 hours north of Lake Mary) for a Friday through Sunday stay – literally decided to do this Thursday night for a Friday departure. My kids are accustomed to my spontaneity and just roll with it. I also invited Logan’s best friend Zach to join us, fortunately his parents rolled with it, too. 🙂  I’m borrowing James’s MINI and knew we couldn’t fit camping gear + 4 humans, so I did a search on the http://reserveamerica.com and found this adorable cabin right on the lake! The park and cabin were both awesome – way better than we expected. It was perfect weather for camping, too – low 50s at night and high 70s/low 80s during the day. The kids loved it, although the teens wanted their space but Jacob wanted to hang with them so there was a good bit of drama throughout the weekend. Maybe someday the 6 year age gap won’t seem so big. *sigh*

Anyway, so here are some photos from the weekend.

Our cabin was absolutely adorable!! Did I mention the great views? The porch was fantastic, perfect for sipping coffee in the morning and watching the sunset at night.

View from our cabin:

Pano from the porch – our cabin was set back farthest from the road so we didn’t have to look at neighbor cabins. Nice!

Logan fishing behind the cabin at sunset:

Sharpening marshmallow sticks:

The kiddos roasted marshmallows (for s’mores!) over the campfire, then Jacob came inside and roasted more in the fireplace, haha! Oh well, we’re on vacation. 😉

Logan and Zach moved the futon mattress onto the porch and slept there both nights. It was insanely cold (51 degrees at one point!) but they were adamant about not hanging out with me and Jacob. Zach is the one with the hoodie pulled tight over his face; Logan’s wearing the camo. These kids are crazy – it was COLD outside!!!

Saturday we rented a canoe for the day and it actually worked out really well – the canoe rental was at the beach directly across the lake from us, and our campsite was the ONLY site with a little sandy spot to park a boat! The kids took the canoe out fishing throughout the day, but didn’t catch anything. They did, however, find a geocache full of army men on the shore!

I took a nice 5-mile hike through the woods, and Saturday evening I did the low crawl near the lake behind our cabin to get some pretty cool macro shots of bugs – check them out in the next blog post! Unfortunately, I think this may be how I ended up with a bad case of chigger bites. So far they’ve lasted 3 days but the end seems to be in sight.

I also added a couple more products, got a cortisone shot, and 2 prescription meds to keep the itching down. It’s been a horrible experience, one I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy.

So please check out my next blog post for photos of the bugs and forest so I didn’t go through the trauma of chigger bites in vain! 🙂