For my birthday this year we went camping at Bear Creek Lake State Park in Virginia. As usual, camping in Virginia is a lot different than camping in the West. It stays warm all day and all night, and the wind hardly blows at all.

This place was a lot of fun. We had never been there before so it was a new experience for us. The campground is a little busier than the ones we’ve been to before, probably because it has a nice beach. We got all set up the first night and had some good food and s’mores before going to sleep for the night.

The next day we took the “boat” out, which is a rubber raft with a hole in it that I patched with duct tape. So it has a working range of about an hour and a half before it starts to get pretty squishy. After that we went down to the beach, which is really nice. The kids played for hours in the water, trying to knock each other off these little foam lily pads.

Then they made animals out of sand. They made a pig and a dragon. Then, Whitney and Heidi drew a birthday card in the sand and Mason, not to be outdone, drew with his foot “Happy Birthday” in one foot high letters and we had birthday treats.

We went back to the camp and the kids worked on gathering wood for our fire, then we started some charcoal and took a little hike. There are a lot of trails at this park and we took off down one and found a turtle, a frog and then saw a deer. Then we went back to the camp where Mason continued to play in the fire, which was his favorite thing to do all weekend.

It was a very nice birthday trip and I think we all had a good time.

This is just the beach at the Park: