Cherry Creek State Park

When summer arrived, we promised ourselves that we would go camping at least once or twice. We blinked our eyes and suddenly, it was mid-September...and we hadn't gone camping yet. So, we packed up our trusty Ford Taurus (and when I say packed up, I'm not kidding...every crevice was filled) and headed off to a local treasure. The Cherry Creek State Park in Denver, CO is smack dab in the middle of Denver. In fact, If you looked at it from the air, you'd see that it was surrounded by sky scrapers and businesses. But, when you are in the park, you don't notice any of that. In fact, we saw deer...in the middle of the city! Can you believe that? When we arrived, we set up our Jeep four-room tent (it's huge) and moved in. I began pumping up our air mattress because if I'm doing a drive up camp experience, I'm just not going to rough it the same way that I would when I backpack. However, the 4 D-cell batteries just didn't have enough power to pump it up. So, we decided to sleep in Steff and Russell's trailer and let all of our kids sleep in the tent by themselves. My boys were so excited to get to sleep "on their own" in a tent with their cousins. Also, some friends join us and we talked them into letting their kids stay overnight in our tent. So, the tent held 9 children, ranging in age from 5 to 14. They had a blast, but they were awfully tired the next day, as we found out on Sunday after a few emotional breakdowns. Joi and I enjoyed hanging out with Steff and Russell and the Warren's. We had a camp fire. Roasted marshmallows and ate smores. We BBQ'd. We went to the lake and let the kids swim, have a mud fight, bury Josiah, and look for sea shells on the beach (what the sea shells were doing in a lake in Colorado, I'll never know). It was a nice trip. We decided afterward that it was a LOT of work for just an overnight trip...so, next time we plan to do it for a couple of nights, at least. Over all, it was fun. It was nice to shower and sleep in my own bed last night though. The joys of camping. I don't have any pictures to post, because I haven't downloaded my camera. But, I'm not sure we took that many pics anyway. I'll have to see. But, I did post a picture that I found online of Cherry Creek State Park...so that you get the idea.