Bugs and snow and bears… oh my!

This past weekend we finally had the chance to go camping! We love, love, love camping but we’ve been so busy this summer that we haven’t had a free weekend to do it. We went to one of our favorite spots a few hours away and we were surprised to find…

…snow! There wasn’t too much but is was all over the campground. Maybe that area didn’t get the memo that it is the middle of July! We had a great time setting up camp, cooking some fun new camp recipes (I’ll share those in a separate post), taking pictures, hiking and geocaching!

We found a nice trail to hike on Saturday and it even had a geocache at the end! On our way back to the car we heard a rustling and grumbling noise coming from just a little ways off the trail. Dave an I both stopped dead in our tracks and listened for more sounds. We heard more grumbling but it stopped so we carefully carried on down the trail and started talking so that we wouldn’t startle any wild animal around. We stopped again when the noise started up again, seemingly closer that it was last time. Gulp! It stopped and we continued walking and talking until we finally came to a clearing near the end of the trail where we saw this:

I don’t know what you think, but that looks like a bear print to me! I am so glad we got out of there before we saw the bear, and before the bear saw us!

The bugs were out in full force and I received no less than 20 mosquito bites even though I drenched myself in bug spray and had nearly every kind of mosquito repellent going around me (Off! candles, mosquito coils, etc.). Even poor Gromit has bite marks on his belly from ants and, possibly, ticks. We had to take him to the vet yesterday to be looked at because he had bite marks that looked like bullseyes. The vet put him on antibiotics to prevent Lyme disease in case he was bitten by ticks. Poor baby!

Despite the snow and bugs and scary moments, we had a wonderful time camping and I can’t wait until we get to do it again!