July 13, 2005 - Wednesday
This is the tent we got for this trip, here at the Ricketts Glen State Park in north central Pennsylvania. It's very big with kind of a center living/common room (behind the door where Harry's standing) and two sleeping areas, one to the right (in photo) and one straight off the back of the common area and at a right angle from the other sleeping area. Partitions hang down inside to make them separate rooms. There are also two pet doors that the boys, annoying, loved to play with and windows off each sleeping area. Wonderfully, the boys, particularly Harry because he's really more physically able, seemed to get a real kick out of helping set it up and take it down. Harry has consistently said camping has been his favorite part of this whole trip, although I'm not sure I completely believe it.

I'd certainly think that Steamtown, another National Historic Site with real steam engines, a real roundhouse, a museum, a movie about trains in a private theater, and a train ride would give it a run for the money. They even got to climb in an engine, a boxcar, a cabin car, and a caboose. We pretty much couldn't go wrong with this place, except eventually needing to leave and get back in the car for several more hours.

Before the kids were born, we took a lot of driving vacations where we'd regularly drive until evening when we'd find a place to put up the tent. No worries. That's what we did tonight, too, ending up in Connecticut's Kettletown State Park, but it was a less pleasant somehow. Awkwardly, it really wasn't the kids that made it that way, at least not directly. It was more my anxiety about things getting out of hand if we waited too long to eat, and the indecision about camping one more night, potentially in the rain, or driving straight home. We did have our first campfire and cooked hamburgers, except for Jeremy who had a cheese sandwich (and still complained about it).




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