NY Camping Trip Recap, Day 1

Sooo... we hit the road Monday morning, June 22 2020, after a weekend of packing and preparing, bound for New York state!

When I planned this trip I had three must-see destinations in mind: Niagara Falls, Letchworth State Park, and Thatcher State Park.  Originally I had thought we would work our way across the state and end in Niagara Falls, but then after reconsidering how we might feel after several nights of camping, I decided to front-load the trip with the long drive at the beginning and have us work our way back towards Massachusetts over the course of the week.

Once we had our plan established I booked us two nights (Monday and Tuesday night) camping at Four Mile Creek State Park, which is about a 25-minute drive from Niagara Falls.  I also booked Wednesday and Thursday nights at the campsite at Letchworth State Park.  We didn't book anything else ahead of time-- this being our first time camping as a family I wanted to see how the first few nights went before committing to more than four nights.

{Side note-- the state of NY has a fabulous, user-friendly website and a very easy booking system for camping.  One login gets you access to all the state parks and you can view all of your reservations there.  Very handy for a trip like ours with visits to multiple parks on one trip.  The fact that they have campsites available at pretty much every single park is a major plus as well.  It's a great camping destination if you're looking for one!}

So anyway, Monday was our driving day.

This was our first time leaving the house for any extended period of time since late February.  The necessity of using public restrooms was the thing that made me most nervous at first.  In fact, we brought along our potty-training car potty and a bucket for the adults, just in case we found the restrooms too crowded, or even closed.  We just didn't know what to expect.

Thankfully, although we did find many restaurants were still closed in the rest areas, the bathrooms were 100% open and not crowded at all.  Traveling on a weekday may have contributed to that.  We masked up every time we had to stop and used hand sanitizer before and after.  The kids got into the routine pretty quickly and things went very smoothly.  I had plenty of food/snacks prepped and cooked ahead of time and packed in the cooler, so we didn't have need of any food stops.

The entire week of our trip there was a chance of rain and/or thunder pretty much every day (and this after a period of fabulous dry weather the week before!  C'est la vie...)  The rain and thunder were predicted for the 6-8 PM time frame that Monday evening.  After a few stops on the road our arrival time at the campsite was going to be just before 5 PM, according to our GPS.  We were crossing fingers that the hour of dry weather between 5-6 PM would be enough time to get the tents and beds set up so that we would be set for bedtime for the girls.  We figured we could eat a cold dinner in the car after setting up if need be; I had packed several options for dinners that didn't require cooking, in view of the rainy forecast.

We arrived and checked in to beautiful Four Mile Creek, a wonderful peaceful place right on the edge of Lake Ontario.  The electric sites on the RV loop were sparsely populated, but we had the non-electric tent camping loop completely to ourselves!

We began setting up our tents and M and I were hurry-scurrying as we were hearing rumbles of thunder.  We had a few moments hesitation about whether to put off the setup, since the rain chances had moved up slightly to just before 6 PM, but because N and L were a HUGE help we were able to get everything set up within about 25 minutes.  Lo and behold, we felt a few sprinkles and then nothing, and a glance at the radar and rain chances for the rest of the evening told us we were unlikely to see rain again until the middle of the night.

And so, cold dinner postponed!  Break out the hot dogs!

I had originally intended the hot dogs for a weenie roast over a camp fire, but just to be on the safe side in case any sudden downpours popped up, I cooked them on the camp stove in a frying pan.

While I was cooking the girls helped M with moving stuff out of the car into what we called the "stuff tent" (the smaller gray tent from M's and my camping days before children) and set up the beds in the sleeping tent (the larger brown 8-man tent we had purchased for the trip).  We just baaaarely had room for all three of our queen-size air mattresses in the sleeping tent, and so everything else went into the stuff tent-- clothing, non-food camping supplies, towels, shoes etc.  Of course all of our food and dishes we kept locked up tightly in the car to avoid attracting animals.  I felt really glad that we had decided in favor of bringing the second tent, because it allowed us to get all extra things out of the car, and sort of use the car as a "kitchen" without too much extra stuff in the way.

L took these pictures of the campsite as we were finishing the setup:

You can see that the fire pits were sort of overgrown; it made me wonder how often people camp here.  Some of them looked like they hadn't been used in years.  It definitely seemed like more of a popular RV camping spot than tent camping.  I'm not really sure why, as the tent sites were really nice.

There were only two negative things about the tent camping loop-- it was next to a sort of marshy area, and although all the water was dried up when we were there, the mosquitoes were still something fierce.  We all got at least 10 bites when we first got out of the car before we managed to get bug spray on.  After that first encounter we all just kept re-applying our Deep Woods Off and we were fine (yes, yes, I know, Deet and all, but trust me, it was a necessary evil).

The second drawback was that the bathroom on the tent-camping loop was locked (not surprising given we were the only people there).  So, we made use of our bucket!  I was very glad we had thought ahead to that possibility and had an immediate solution, arriving after having ridden in the car all day, and with most of the family needing a bathroom.  We later discovered that there was a bathroom open in the RV loop nextdoor, so from that point on we just made the walk.

After we finished setup and refilled all our water bottles at the water spigot nearby, it was hot dog time!

Nothing tastes so good as a hot dog after an active hour or two of campsite setup.

J absolutely insisted on doing the dishes, and she kept on insisting for every single meal almost the whole duration of our trip!  For her, it was like playing in the water table :)  Not everything got 100% clean but you will never hear me complain about that, and since the dishes were living in the car it didn't really matter.  Having to hand wash every dish after every meal is one of my least favorite things about camping so I was THRILLED that the girls wanted to take over on this.  I usually had a big girl who was willing to rinse and dry after J did the scrubbing in the soapy water.

As the girls were doing the dishes and I was packing up and putting away food, M got a fire going since all rain chances were now zero until after midnight.  S'more time!!!

The Reeses Peanut Butter Cup S'more was my s'more of choice all week.  Highly recommend.

After we were all thoroughly s'mored and stuffed, I made the suggestion that we walk over to the lake shore and watch the sunset... I had read it was a must-see while camping in this park.  So we packed up the food, put out the fire, and walked the roughly 3/4 mile from our campsite to the lake shore.  Because it was nearly 9 PM I can't say the girls were super enthusiastic about walking, particularly the younger ones, but it was definitely worth it!

The lake was SO still and peaceful; it was sort of surreal since we're all used to the ocean waves when we see such a large body of water.  But it was certainly an awe-inspiring sight.  It was very quiet, and there were lots of birds that were diving and fishing, and you could see for miles and miles across the water, and the colors were so vivid.  Amazing!  I'm really glad we were able to do this on the first night when we all still had the energy for staying up late.

We walked back to the campsite in semi-darkness but we had brought our headlamps and lanterns so we were able to find our way.  After two different trips to the bathroom (not a short walk!) and trips to the water spigot for teeth brushing, we finally had everyone in pjs and ready for bed around 10:30 PM.

I had absolutely zero expectations that anyone would sleep.  I went into this night setting my expectations low, predicting that 100% of our family would be awake the entire night, and not get a wink of sleep.  So I was pleasantly surprised when all of the girls fell asleep by about midnight, and although adrenaline of listening for animals and feeling anxious about the girls sleeping kept me awake until probably between 1 and 2 AM, I did eventually drift off!  Win!

But... if you know about what time birds start singing with the first light of day in the summer months, you can guess what time everyone was awake the next morning...

To be continued!!!

{read part 2 here!}