Beach camping: Gulf Shores State Park

As we are about to embark on another camping adventure I wanted to update our little blog with our summer trip before we go!  We went down to Gulf Shores to their State Park to camp for a week at July 4th & boy was it HOT!!  I have stayed here before & we have all been to Gulf Shores before but staying at the park together was a new thing for us.  This park was torn apart by the hurricanes in 2005 & it has yet to really recover.  There is not a lot of shade available at most of the spots, as you can see here we had one little tree near us:

The facilities were clean & really close (across the street) which was nice.  Here was our whole area:

We found this little guy in our beach bag on the first morning...

We got some new lights which looked cool but in the summertime they attracted tons of bugs & mosquitos so we ended up not getting to use them much... but they were pretty!

About the second day there someone 2 spots over from us saw a baby gator up on their spot, right next to them as they ate dinner!  This made us watch Lucy like a hawk!  The brush right behind us obviously had gators in it which might think she was a meal!  I did not like this feature of the park but we didn't see any gators on the trip (thank goodness!)  Here's our sweet Lulu with her bone...

We bought a deep fryer on this trip which turned out to be one of the best appliances we've ever purchased!  We ate like royalty without all of the cost!  Charles is VERY good at frying ;)

What a feast!!

Leah's first airbrushed t-shirt!  She loves it & has worn it quite a bit since the trip too!  She also got a new bicycle on this trip & though she has not yet mastered it, she learned so quickly on the trip!  We are excited she will have it for all our other trips too!

The one thing I really wanted to get while we were down at the beach was also an airbrushed item... a custom license plate!  Shown below, it is on the inside of our camper & covers a hole right as you walk in the door, I think it turned out perfect! (Leah picked out the plate, good job!)

Speaking of Leah, check out the "foam party" she got to do at The Hangout!  There was TONS of foam!!

She said it was weird... felt like nothing, but yet she was surrounded by white!  It was quite a sight for sure!

Of course we spent some time on the beach which felt great!  Here's Charles & Leah catching some waves...

There were also beautiful sunsets every night... 

Overall we had a great trip, though the heat made it hard at times. The state park was an ok experience but until they get more shade trees grown in, I don't think we will be going back... at least not in the middle of summer!

Happy Camping!!

The Story of a Camper Transformation

So between camping trips we have been "updating" and fixing the camper which was in remarkable shape for being 15 years old but still needed some love. So here are the before photos:

So it could be worse but still... very dated! The FIRST thing I did was tear down that horrible ruffle (literally tearing it out, it was stapled into the ceiling!) It was already greatly improved :) I didn't mind the cushions but the curtains had to go! They were faded, musty & had holes in them, yuk! I decided I wanted it to feel "beachy" so the new curtains & cushions had to match & be colorful. My mom is an EXPERT decorator (truly gifted!) so she & I corresponded via emails of photos of fabrics & colors while I shopped around until we could go out together. We found the PERFECT striped fabric for the cushions & privacy curtains (for the beds) & got a navy solid for the other curtains. She put her creative touch on everything & lined the blue curtains with the stripe to tie it all together. The end result is nothing short of SPECTACULAR to me...

Tell me that isn't an amazing transformation??!! We are very happy with the end result & I truly can't thank my WONDERFUL mom enough for sewing all the fabrics for me (it would have been a disaster if I had done them) LOVE YOU MOM!!

There were other less obvious changes we made that contributed to the update too. All the hardware inside was brass & with a simple paint job it all became silver :) (I did that, I can handle paint! oh the irony... read on) Also my AWESOME husband fixed so many things it's hard to list them all!! The biggest few being the AC cord that was hanging in the middle (!!) of the room he put nicely back in place (it was a MUCH bigger job than I can explain here) & the really cool LED lights he put inside (complete with dimmers & multiple switches) which give the inside a nice glow. Again, I can't quite explain enough how BIG these "little" jobs were but I'm so thankful for such a handy hubby, LOVE YOU CHARLES!!

So for all the things we did right on the inside, things were much different for the outside. Here's the outside before:

Again, not too bad. Pretty simple design & MOST of the stripes were still there. Before we decided to delve into repainting the whole thing I actually resorted to using Sharpies to fill in the chipped parts of the stripes! Hmm, yeah, not so much... So we decided to paint. Now we had a modest budget & couldn't take it to someone to get it done professionally (which I recommend, btw) but I've painted so many rooms & other things that I thought "I can do this!" Yeah, right.

I headed to the hardware store for some advice & paint. I got both, and some strange looks too when I explained what I was doing... don't judge, I'm going to MAKE this work, lol! So I decided to try to match the color of the canvas material on the tent part which was a strange greenish-bluish color & got some house paint. Off I went:

The photo makes it look better than it was, totally dull. It was as close to the color of the canvas I could have possibly gotten but even glossy house paint isn’t as vibrant as painted canvas. I thought it needed more “sparkle” so I did something that Charles will NEVER let me live down (He even videorecorded me doing it but that recording is, ahem, unavailable for this post ;) I used spray glitter over the green, you know, the kind you use on t-shirts & stuff. Yeah... interesting but not quite the look I wanted (as Charles nearly falls over with laughter...) So, crap. I have this stupid glitter-camper now. (you’re laughing now, aren’t you? Yeah, me too)

I couldn’t go out in public with this thing, I’m sure someone would have taken a photo & posted it in one of those “Biggest redneck” emails or something. So it had to come off, all of it. Easier said than done:

I had already spent 2 days out in the heat painting this thing & now I had to undo all of it. And it wouldn’t. come. off. Gah!!! We ended up back at the same hardware store, asking for paint remover this time. (oh the shame) We tried the usual stuff first then we moved on to industrial strength...WOW! Not only did it get the greenish-blue off, but it also took off all the stripes & all the factory white. We got it down all the way to the aluminum! But now what?? I slumped down in defeat. For the first time in this project I was at a total loss for how to fix the issue. Well, we knew we couldn’t leave it mostly aluminum with bits of white & green all over the edges... so back to white:

It remains this way to this day (weeks later) as we wait to decide to either get it painted professionally or to just pinstripe it ourselves (I could see that going VERY badly). We had big plans for the look of our treasure, here is what we wanted:

But in the end, plain white isn’t so bad... For now :)

Happy Camping!

Lake Guntersville State Park

So as I said before in my first post, our camping adventures began at Lake Guntersville. It was a great campground (I say was because when the tornadoes came thru in April 2011 it pretty much destroyed the sites) We were close enough to walk to a bath house (very nice) and to the lake which made for some beautiful sunsets!

We were very "woodsy" on this trip & cooked all our meals (which took... a while) but it was nice because it really made us all slow down and just relax. We also had lots of campfires, had to buy our wood though because we thought we couldn't have campfires so we didn't bring any with us... Not the greatest idea, lol! Made great s'mores almost every night & had fun taking some crazy fire pics!

Hanging out the first night by the campfire talking to our new neighbors by the fire was peaceful & relaxing, then they came... Leah had gone to sleep already but when three deer came within mere feet of us I just had to wake her up to see them! I practically had to hold her up, she was still very out of it but she saw them... then asked groggily to go back to sleep & I carried her back to the tent.

It's a terrible pic of them but it's the only one I could get. I was obviously more excited than everyone else (and probably more than I should have been, lol) The second night they came back at the same time & I didn't bother to wake Leah up this time but I did get a little braver. Our neighbors told me the deer would eat from my hand & I just happened to have a bag of Doritos in my lap...

So I walked out to the road, slowly, got about 5 feet from one of them on the road and held out a chip... waiting... it looked at me and slowly walked toward me & took it from my hand! I held out another one & it got closer... I fed it several chips & it got close enough for me to feel its wet squishy nose, I was as giddy as a kid!! I'll never forget the experience :)

Our only full day at the park we decided to try a hiking trail. We drove out of the campgrounds and down the road just a little to the Cave Trail. We got a little ways down the trail when we passed another family who asked if we knew we had passed the cave already. Hmm, really? We have only been walking about 5 minutes... sure enough, though, the "cave" was about 100 feet from the trail head, lol! We went up to it and started to explore...

We couldn't get very far into it & it was damp & muddy inside but still a neat cave. We still wanted to hike so we took off down the trail eventually finding a big rock to stop for lunch on.

Totally alone together, it was nice :) We headed back toward the cave where there was a stream coming out of the rocks. We all had fun playing with our cameras taking photos of all the nature...

Leah was so hot she decided to take off her shoes and get in the water... you can see from her face how that felt! LOL

It was COOOLLD!! But she was still happy to have cooled off a little :) We also went to the beach for the afternoon & got a TON of shells to bring home! Still not sure what we will make with them but we'll figure out something crafty! Here's her "castle"

Overall it was a great trip! We met some nice people who helped us out a lot & Leah made friends too!

Until next time...
Happy Camping!

How we got started...

Welcome to our new Blog about camping! We are a happy family of three who enjoy camping together & I wanted to keep up with all the many adventures we will have together & share them with you! Mostly I'm doing this for us to keep up with all the little stories we have from each trip but I still hope this will be fun for everyone to read!

Look for new posts every time we go camping as well as a "personal review" of each campsite we go to.

Here is how we started: The Tent

It was a tiny little thing and there is a good story to go along, but that will be in the next post...

And here is what we got next: The Pop-up

It is an older model (1996 - older than our daughter, LOL!) but it gets the job done... we are cool(er) and dry for our trips and that helps a lot!

There will be another post soon about the transformation of the camper from "90s country home" style to "Modern Beachy retreat" style (oh, and my misadventures in paint...)

That's all for now though, thanks for reading!

Happy camping!