The weekend began on a Thursday with Tom and I setting up our campsite in the blazing heat. After much fiddling around we got his camper set up. Later that evening Tom and I went up to the Red Iron Tavern in Wellington for much deserved wings and a salad, chased with a beer.
Friday morning began with Tom and I going to the lake to enjoy the beautiful day. Tom went fishing and I just paddled around enjoying the scenery. Later that day the rest of the group started coming in. Lance had his VW camper bus with Liz, Colleen and Steve next to follow. Steve, Coleen and Liz brought plenty of wonderful Christmas Decorations and had a theme of a candy cane lane, leading to Santa Claus. Chuck showed up later and set up while he waited for Kerri to get off work.
During the course of the day I met a lady named Sue who was a camp host, who traveled for the last 7 years exclusively living in her travel trailer. Her trailer had to be moved so I invited her to join us since we had plenty of room. She definitely had a lot of stories to tell us with all of her travels and we enjoyed her company. Friday night we had a delicious dinner of burgers and hot dogs on a campfire and Mary and Eric joined us for dinner. Kerri showed up later on and the group hung out visiting.
Saturday morning we got up and I wanted to get started early on the lake playing our bobber game. They were talking thunderstorms so we were not gonna wait around too long getting there. We had 7 participants with Lance staying on the sidelines and encouraging us to grab that one and grab this one. There was fierce competition. In the end somehow a number 7 bobber took off on its own and was never found. Steve was sure it was sabotaged on someone's part. Coleen managed to come in 1st place followed by Kerri and her dog Cookie who was on her 1st ever outing on the water. She did so good. Also scoring a gift was Tom and Liz. 1st prize was a donated present of a one year pass to all the national parks. We managed to load up and get back to our campsite for lunch and a pouring down rain. After the rain stopped, we all went for a walk up to the nature center. We treated ourselves to some of their delicious handscooped ice cream. While we were there Kerri and the Naturalist, Wiz, did a fish impression painting. Kerri made one of the most colorful ones I've ever seen. Beautiful.
After returning to camp, Mike and Judy were setting up their site. We had plenty of guests arriving that evening for our Christmas in July dinner and gift exchange but not spending the night. Ron and Jillinda, Eric and Mary followed by Ruth. Ruth brought along her son Stephen, with other out of town guests. Her son Sean from California and sister in law Ann with her Grandsons Nathan and Phineas hailing from South Carolina. What a wonderful group of friends were gathered that evening. We had so much food and good fun exchanging Christmas gifts. Stephen and Colleen won 1st prize for the decorations that adorned their campsite. After all of our guests left and things settle down several of us got around to playing some cards. Euchre was the game. We opened up Chuck's Christmas present. It was a bottle of bourbon and just as we were about to do a little toast, he sat down and the whole seat of his chair gave way. He didn't have far to go if he needed to be low to the ground. After helping him up we had our toast. A little bit later several of the campground monitors, AKA Raccoons, came to our site brazingly just walking around. They were quite the nuisance at the campgrounds. They spent all evening while we slept trying to get into our gear. During the evening we had quite the rain so we all got to wake up to a wet campground.
Sunday morning started off with a delicious breakfast cooked by Kerri. There was fried potatoes with ham, scrambled eggs and we also had some toast to go along with it. No one left hungry. Mike, Judy and Lance went mushroom hunting. I heard they got so many they had to finally just stop picking. People just started packing up later on and and moved it on down the road planning our next trip to the Allegheny in August.
I can't tell you how much joy I had from seeing everyone and everyone enjoying our time together at Findley park. I want to thank Kerri Scott for taking all the photos for me.
Laura Mutchler
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