After departing Rhode Island, we made our way to the Adirondacks.  This place is beautiful, but a really hard place to visit due to lack of organization of information.  My mom and dad searched and searched and just could not find a common repository of information on the Adirondack Park.  Why?  Mom and dad said it appears there is no common pool of information as the park is just a collection of areas that are all unrelated.  We sure hope New York puts this all in place as we really want to come back and spend more time hiking and camping.
The park is very pretty and quite vast, but you need time to get around and figure it all out as we drove around a lot and really did not see much of what we were looking for.  We settled for camping in the Wilmington Notch State Park campground which is very near an amazing waterfall.  The campground is far from great with a giant chain link fence running around the whole place.  My brothers and I like to explore and this place was not the most kid adventurer friendly.  The campground is right on the road as well and there were lots of cars flying by.  Not our idea of what camping should be like.  The bathroom lights were so bright throughout the park that my brothers and I all got a really nice tan while we were sleeping.

The falls behind the giant chain link fence were spectacular.  We hiked down and around the falls for an hour or two.  Lots of high peaks that required sure footing.  We did not do any of our normal dance moves as it was just too tricky.  My parents had to hang on to our little brother as he is quite fast and crazy and very well could have accidentally jumped off a cliff.  He is chubby and like a Bumble would probably bounce.

Next up we are heading to the Ben and Jerry’s Ice Cream Factory in Vermont and then to Franconia Notch in New Hampshire.  We will cross Lake Champlain via ferry which should be really cool.  Adios, New York!

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The original Krispy Kreme was a breakfast spot on the way out of DC.  We need to load up before heading out for some Cheese Steaks.

Pat’s Steaks was our choice this year.  Pat’s created the whole Cheese Steak thing so we wanted to give them a try.  We went to Jim’s steaks 3 or 4 years back and in my opinion Jim’s was better.  Pat’s may have invented the Cheese Steak, but others have polished up the idea a bit more.  I barely ate any of my steak and normally I eat the whole thing and more.  To me, Philly Connection in Cypress was better than Pat’s.  Sorry Pat!  The atmosphere was really cool and it was fun to see that part of Philly.

Independence Hall is a must anytime you visit Philly.  Our Founding Fathers signed the Declaration of Independence here and we owe those old awesome dudes a serious debt of gratitude.  We could use a bit more founding father approach to government today.  At least, it would be nice if our politicians would read and debate the stuff they are signing.  It is sad and scary to see how many things are signed and never fully read.

We have some good friends, the Stahls, from our neighborhood, who were having a family reunion in Philadelphia, so we crashed their party.  Then, we stuck together for a few days.  We started at Valley Forge, which was really close to the party location.

Valley Forge was somewhat interesting. We had the most fun launching stick boats in the river. We made it so that our parents could do everything except see us before launching a siege on them.  The water and buildings were old, but cool and the site is a nice one to visit.

We followed our friends farther to their Grum’s house in Charlestown, RI. The Rhode Island beach was so cool; actually, it was cold.  I mean, it was fffffreezing.  After boogie boarding, we built a fort that consisted of two pits with a tunnel in between them.   We did a bit of crawling through the tunnel and then what was left of it was crushed.  The picture below is in the middle of the wrecking process, the tunnel is already destroyed.

The beaches this far north are so different than our TX beaches or FL beaches or even from the ones in California.  It was cool to check this one out and it was really fun to hang out with our friends for a few days.

Going to the Adirondacks next.

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On our way to Bowling Green after we left Lake Ouchita, we took a drive through the Land Between the Lakes.  We stopped off in Paris for the night before we went through the mystical Land Between the Lakes.  We saw T-rex  and lots of other dinos, including the Buffalo.

There are tons of amazing places to camp, fish, and hike in this great state park.  There is a 68 mile hiking trail that runs from south to north through the entire state park.  This looks like a great warmup or practice for the AT.

In Bowling Green, we spent a week hiking and playing while my dad conducted an AP Computer Science Summer Institute at Western Kentucky University.  Thanks, Dad.
Our first adventure was a visit to the Louisville Zoo.  The Zoo was great and especially the Siberian Tiger.  Ben loves kitty cats and wants to be one someday.

Next, we went out to Mammoth Cave, one of our most favorite National Parks, so that I could do a Boy Scout service project to finish up my Star requirements.  We spent 6+ hours in the sweltering heat and rain blazing trails out through the park.  We were happy to give back to Mammoth Cave as it has given us many amazing memories.  We love this park.  We also did a tour through the cave to see the new entrance just to do some exploring.  We love caves and hiking.

Beech Bend is Bowling Green is our favorite amusement park.  It is not real big, but has enough to keep us going and always has really nice people running the park.  The drinks are cold, the sunscreen is free, and the rides are terrifyingly scary.  What a fun day.  Big Wile loves the whip as you can see in the following pic.

On our way to Fort Necessity, looking for squatches along the way.

at Fort Necessity, we all learned a ton about Indian Lore.  I was able to complete my Indian Lore Merit Badge and my brothers and parents learned a ton.  We learned how to make wampum bracelets, played a few indian games and heard allot of cool stories. Afterwards, we checked the fort and learned about how even great men like George Washington make mistakes from which they learn.

Shenandoah National Park is up next.  We are looking forward to some fun camping and hiking on the AT.  Washington DC is just around the corner as well as we will hit some museums and all of the cool National Monuments on the mall.

First, we stopped off at Caddo Lake to look for Squatches as a good friend of ours grew up there and told us about his experiences.  What a spooky place and clearly a great spot for Sasquaticus to live and play.  We are pretty sure we saw a couple or they were just really hairy humans that do not shower much.  You look at the pics and you be the judge.

At Lake Ouachita State Park, we went swimming in the lake every day. We also went on a four mile hike and that was really cool. It felt amazing temperature wise so I slept in my hammock every night. We were in site t7 in the walk in section and the view was awesome. We also had silver turtles as usual and tried s’mores bananas.  The weather was great and the breeze out on the peninsula was really helpful.  Check out the pics below.

See you in Paris!

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