I've always made fun of Camelbak backpacks, but recently we got one for our hiking backpack and then one for Meadow's birthday present. At a garage sale I even picked up an old Camelbak. Meadow got some birthday money from her Tuska grandparents. When I asked her what she wanted she picked a hiking backpack. We lucked out on finding one that holds a water resivor. I told her the bag was going to get heavier with water, but she still loved it.  Even with it being the end of July already, we still had to get our annual berry picking in. Sadly our usual berry farm experienced hail damage in June and was closed for the summer. We settled on going back to  Sam Kedem Nursery Garden . We hadn't been to Sam Kedem's for a few years and with our normal berry picking field out of service it just made sense. The blueberries were inside of these nets and I kept getting stuck on the net.  The berries were super tiny and not as plentiful as our...

I hadn't really planned on driving through Mississippi, so I found a route that took us back through Lousiana and into Arkansas. Before we made it to the Land of the Downriver People we stopped in Monroe for some soul food.

We had our second longest drive halfway done by the time we had passed Houston and reached Beaumont, Texas. It was definitely starting to look more like Louisiana and less like Texas.

Before we could meet up with Cevonne, JT and the family we had to eat. We drove to Fredericksburg. A little tourist town in the middle of nowhere.

Day 1 - Tuesday This really is the summer of Hipcamp. When the opportunity came up for Scott to do some campsites around Austin we knew this was also the perfect excuse to see our friends Cevonne and Jose. With the time I've taken off of work already I wasn't sure I'd be able to go. Luckily I was given the okay and we were on our next adventure. Brooke did in fact get off and one night in mid-July we were driving as far as we could in one night through Iowa and onto Missouri. Scott picked me up from work with plans to get as close to Arkansas as we could.

We've been trying to figure out a weekend when we could camp with our friends Shannyn and Brent to go camping. They were planning a weekend with some other friends, Alyson and Tom, and so we all met up at Rice Creek Chain of Lakes Reserver in nearby Lino Lakes. The other two have just over 12 month olds and wanted to try camping with them. We of course agreed to come along. I was thinking the campsite would be like 40 minutes maybe an hour away. Yea it was like 20 minutes.

I just love looking at these. It went from barely shading Scott to shading half of our backyard. What do you think? Did the tree or did I change more? 2010 2011  2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017

Friday With all the time I've taken off already I didn't take any additional time off for 4th of July. That meant we didn't leave until Friday after work. Actually this worked out in our favor because most people left early so traffic was great. We also got to stop at dive along the route for a Friday Fish Fry. We always drive through the 10-second-town of Poskin thinking it had nothing in it. As we were driving by I saw a family come out of this dive bar, the Coach Bar , with to-go containers. I noticed their sign said Friday Night Fish Fry. So we thought we would give it a try. I had no idea it was an actual restaurant. I always just assumed Brooke wasn't that into dive bar food. Why, yes, I will have cottage cheese with my fish and a glass of Leine's. This turned out to be good and cheap. The Coach Bar will definitely be added to our list of places to stop on Wisconsin's US Highway 8. We really need to write a book about the hidd...