We went camping this past weekend, down at Indian Celina Recreation Area. It was a lovely site, and we got to go with some good friends. We went on a hike Saturday at Hemlock Cliffs, which luckily a friend had told Jemme about because, whew, just when you thought, This is a mighty small gravel road, it turned into a dirt road and then sort of a dirt track. But the hike was worth it. Lots of climbing over rocks and scrambling around – a creek in which the kids and Dan and Jemme found various animals AND a salamander’s tail, still wiggling. This time, when traveling, I’d brought trail mix and granola bars, so I didn’t perish from hunger!

And it was a beautiful day to boot – warm enough for shorts, cool enough that we weren’t melting on the trail.

Started to rain that night.

We decided to pack up and head out, even though we were supposed to have another day. The forecast was for rain all day and then the next, plus thunderstorms. We later discovered that there was also a tornado watch. I get shaky when I’m in my stone house and there’s a weather event; I was not comfortable with being in the tent with, you know, weather. Went to Marengo Caves.

Not the greatest pic but you can see some of the stalagmites – you can remember the difference between stalagmites and stalactites because “You MIGHT trip over them” and “They hang TIGHTLY to the ceiling.” If they grow together, they form a column (“You can remember that because, a column? That’s what we call ’em.”) Now I’ve ruined most of the jokes for the tour guides! Man! I won’t tell you the best one, so you can laugh on the tour!

There were two tours, the Dripstone Trail and the Crystal Palace. The Crystal Palace had the best formations, and was slightly shorter. It was also helped by the fact that we had a GREAT guide, Larry – it turned out that he was the guide trainer, and he really knew his stuff and was very engaging. The Dripstone Trail had some cool formations as well, but our guide wasn’t as polished as Larry, and somehow the formations didn’t seem as spectacular.

I don’t love camping, but I like it all right, and it does give us a chance to get outside a lot. Also, Miranda seemed to be doing better with her allergies, so that was terrific. We made hobo dinners. I didn’t think they turned out well (large portions of mine were burnt to a crisp), but the girls and Dan said that they were good. I tried a hash browns hack – dried hash browns that come in a milk carton kind of container. You pour hot water on them and they stand for 12 min, then you cook them. I used those instead of chopping potatoes, and that did seem to cut down on our cooking time. We also made pies – using a pie iron, white bread, fruit filling, butter and powdered sugar – as Brenna said, definitively, “There’s nothing healthy about these.” But boy, they’re tasty. THOSE turned out great!