This Memorial Day, we tried something new.
We’re aware that Memorial Day is supposed to be a day of remembering those who lost their lives in service of country, and per all of the haughty facebook posts, not a day for barbecues, or to thank people for their service.
I get this, but I also think that part of appreciating and remembering those who paid the ultimate sacrifice is taking the time and spending it with family, so of course we went camping.
If you read my Memorial Day Prep post (and picked up the FREE 5-day meal plan, shopping list & prep checklist printable) you’ll know that we camped with 4 other families at a new campsite. It all went quite well, thankfully, so I wanted to share some pictures, takeaways, etc with you now that we’re home and thoroughly scrubbed.
Our Campsite + The Weather
Our campsite at Rustic Acres was, errrrr…… interesting. Take a look at this picture and you’ll see why:
Do you see the giant puddle in the background? That was what the whole campsite was like. So, if you ever go to Rustic Acres, avoid campsites 65 – 69. Apparently the regulars know that it tends to be a mud pit, which is why it was the only campsite group left.
By day 3, I was So OVER the mud, that when the guys wanted to head out to the farm to fish and target shoot, I went with them, knowing I would be bored out of my mind, but just because I needed to get out of the mud for a while.
When we got back, around 1pm, the sun had taken care of the majority of the mud, and from there on out, besides being super humid and hot (par for the course) we didn’t have any other weather/precipitation problems.
What We Liked
This camping trip we called our “dry run” for the season. See, this was our first time camping with our camper, and a couple of other families’ first time with their campers as well, so it was really nice that this site was only 45 minutes from home, and only 15 minutes from my in-laws house. That way, if something didn’t work or went wrong, we could go home or get it fixed really easily.
Also a plus, my wifi worked great so I was able to work remotely on Friday rather than burn a vacation day!
Rustic Acres had a “general store” which was admittedly kind of nice to pick up extra batteries that we needed and a couple of late-night snacks. Surprisingly, the store’s prices were pretty affordable, but maybe that’s because of the excessive fees that I’ll talk about in “what we didn’t like.”
As always, there was tons of fun.
Popsicles were absolutely vital because of how hot and muggy it was
A panorama of our campsite. I think this was the closest we’ve ever been to each other.
S’mores, of course, were necessary.
But, overall, we had a ton of fun!
What We Didn’t Like
We weren’t super impressed with Rustic Acres, to say the least. To start off, when we got there we found out the campsites were quite small. Given that our group was sharing 5 campsites all together, we turned the outside spaces into communal space and it wasn’t bad. But if we had been camping alone as a family, it would have been really awkward at these small campsites because both the firepit, picnic table, and common space are shared between 2 campsites.
Kind of weird, right?
I mean, I’m all for meeting people, but usually you rent a campsite with the expectation that you’ll have your own picnic table or at least fire pit.
Then there was the pool issue. Say what you want, but I don’t like swimming in lakes, so I was pretty excited to have a swimming pool to take the kiddos to. In case you didn’t know, our daughter Jessica is quite the little fish. In fact, she wouldn’t get out of the pool all day if we didn’t make her.
Before the trip, we had scoured Rustic Acres’ website for costs so we wouldn’t be surprised. But when we showed up, the information they gave us said that they charged for use of the pool, to the tune of $3 per person, er day. Not a huge fee, but when other campsites don’t charge, and it wasn’t anywhere on the website, we weren’t too pleased.
We griped about the pool costs for 2 days before someone went up to the office and asked, and as it turned out, they don’t charge campers for use of the pool, just visitors and surrounding community.
Once we found that out, we spent quite a bit of time in the pool and found that it was a pretty nice pool, probably the nicest of all the campsites we’ve been too.
They also charged for fishing…not for a license, but to actually fish….. I don’t care because I don’t fish, and we ended up just going to my in-laws lake to fish, but still……
Life is good…honestly.
It’s even better when you’re camping, but the coming home?
Well, I’ll just leave you with this:
Til Next Time,
Gretchen
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