1st Camping trip of the Season...

This past weekend we headed north to Black Butte Lake and camped at Orland Buttes campground. I would love to rave and say we had a fabulous time, but it just wasn't that great. The drive was good and not too long. But the heat decided to finally come and it was hot the whole time.

We were greeted at our campsite with a couple of these guys.
They were everywhere, which the boys thought was cool.

This little dude was camped out in the bathroom for the first afternoon, he left to never be seen again...

One good thing was our actual campsite, we were able to move from another that wasn't so great. Nice and flat, sturdy table, a nice fire ring, private and shady.

We explored a bit, finding the only water access within walking was the boat ramp, a place you can't play.

We didn't have room to bring any wood, so we roasted marshmallows over the grill. Not quite as fun, but it did the job and they were delicious!

Saturday morning the guys all headed out to walk the one trail that was apart of our campground. They said it was kinda cool, gave a nice look of the lake and some historical info.

A little later in the morning we hopped into the van and drove to the other campground on the other side of the lake. They had a day-use area that we were able to set up at so the boys could swim. We brought our little grill and had hot dogs for lunch. Nice way to salvage the trip.

On the way to the other campground we saw a sign for Farm Sanctuary, saying they give farm tours on Saturdays from 11-3pm. So we made a mental note and stopped on the way back. That was interesting. Not knowing what we were getting ourselves into, we paid for the tour and quickly learned that farm animals are friends, not food and that we should go vegan. We behaved and kept our comments to ourselves while the boys had a good time petting the different animals.

Once we were back to our site we decided that ice cream was in order. So we pulled out the bags and started shaking! That was some gooood ice cream!

After that we realized it was still hot and too early to start cooking dinner, so we hopped back into the van and drove the short jaunt to the one water play area in our site.

Looking up at the hill at the V in the trees is about where our site was.

Cody had his jacket on and was gone. He had a lot of fun swimming this weekend!

Ty did a lot of this, not super confident that his jacket would actually float him. But he stayed cool and seamed to have a good time.

We headed home just after breakfast on Sunday because we had had enough of the heat and didn't really see the need to stay all day. Luckily we were able to hit a Sonic on the way home for some limeaides and the boys slept off the weekend during the afternoon naps.

Next weekend we get to try again, heading up towards Truckee for some cooler, mountain camping. With any luck there will be better trails to explore and some more water to play in, although it will probably be icy cold!