Last year, we had snow on April Fool’s Day. This year we had snow on April 23! How crazy is that?? 
I certainly hope if you were camping this weekend, you didn’t need to turn on your heater! I wasn’t but I did have to turn on the heat in the house again.
On our recent drive to Florida, we stopped at New River Gorge, WV for lunch. It turned out to be a gorgeous place!
The bridge - 896 feet high!
Walkway down into the gorge to look up at the bridge. Well worth the walk!
The old (still usable) bridge. I want to drive over it.
Crazy maze of roads down by the old bridge - most are narrow and one way. I want to drive on them too.
New River
My husband wants to try the Catwalk Tour. I’m not nearly that brave (plus kids can’t go on tours)! However, brave (crazy?) souls can walk across the bridge on the catwalks for $69/person. They are 24 inches wide and according to the website, there is a substantial railing. Walkers are fastened to a safety cable so there is no way a person can fall.
The gorge itself is beautiful and the bridge is amazing! There are a couple campgrounds nearby and we’re thinking about spending a weekend there this summer. New River Campground is about 16 miles away from the New River Gorge Bridge. Southern West Virginia CVB has a list of campgrounds some of which are close to New River Gorge.
So, have you ever been here? Would you do the catwalk tour?
I’ve talked before about why we got a pop-up camper, but I’ve come up with a list of ten reasons why we chose to start camping in general and why we bought a pop-up camper.
10. Tent camping is not for us! We need a bed – we even have a pillowtop for our camper bed.
9. Pop ups are relatively inexpensive (compared to those million dollar class As) and easy to set up and store.
8. You know what your lodging will be like no matter where you go.
7. Each campground offers a unique experience.
6. Camping in general is very family oriented.
5. Your camper is like a touch of home no matter where you are.
4. You can find campgrounds just about everywhere.
3. You never have to request adjoining rooms.
2. Our kids love camping in a pop up!
Why would you choose to go camping?
One of the things we’ve become good at over the past few years is travelling with kids (notice I said kids and not babies!). We have three kids, currently 7, 5, and 3. Since we’ve lived several hours from our families our whole married life, we’ve been travelling with kids since they were babies. Our daughter was such an easy baby (I was ready for baby #2 when she was just 6 months old…hubby talked me out of it, but that’s another story!) and travelling with her was so easy! She loved being in her car seat. She would nurse, sleep, wake up to nurse, go back to sleep, and wake up when we got to our parents. We travelled in the evening so I’m sure that helped too. Then, along came our first son. He was NOT an easy travelling companion. He hated being in his car seat for any length of time – 5 minutes to the grocery store was about his limit! Plus about this time our daughter started getting car sick. She would be fine and then we would hear a funny sound and she had thrown up. When we would stop to get her cleaned up, our son would think we were at our destination and would become very upset because we weren’t getting him out of his car seat. Travelling became a chore and we cut way back. Our third child, also a boy, wasn’t much of a traveller either. Finally, our daughter outgrew her car sickness and our two boys got so they travelled a little better. Now, travelling isn’t so bad and we’ve just returned from our second driving trip to Florida (about 19 hours + stops over two days) We’ve come up with a few things that make it easier.
Borrowed from Amy's Finer Things
Camping with my family is my bliss. Camping in a pop up forces us to spend a lot of time in close quarters (especially on rainy evenings!). It means that we can’t veg in front of the tv (because there isn’t room for one in a pop up camper) and sometimes there is no internet access either! It means actually talking to each other and listening to each other and to our kids. Even driving to our destination requires us to talk to each other – our tow vehicle doesn’t have a DVD player and I’m too cheap to buy a portable one. We listen to the radio or CD’s, the kids make up silly songs, we listen to our GPS telling us where to go….wait, maybe that isn’t so blissful. Taking the kids to the playground or pool and staying until they are ready to go because there’s no hurry to get anywhere, there’s no to-do list hanging over my head, just time – time to spend with my family. Probably everyone’s favorite part of the camping day – spending time around the camp fire at the end of the day, roasting marshmallows, eating s’mores. It’s all bliss to me!
I want to direct your attention to another page on this site. Candid Camping Comments is written by my husband and gives his unique perspective on our adventures in pop up camping. The first entry is about our Shakedown Cruise. We’ll be adding more to it or rather he will be adding to it in the near future.
Meals for camping need to be easy to prepare. Space is vey limited especially in a pop up camper! One of my favorite meals to make when we’re camping is camper’s stew. It’s easy to make and customize to individual tastes. The basic recipe is:
For each meal, you will need a piece of aluminum foil big enough to wrap the whole thing in. Put a hamburger patty down first, then sliced potatoes, sliced onions (these are optional – I love extra onions and John prefers just a little), sliced carrots & celery, salt and pepper to taste. Put a pat of butter on top of each one. Fold two ends up and roll them down. Then roll the other ends in. Cook over your fire until they are done – we like ours just well done and it takes about 20 minutes. I flip mine about halfway through and that prevents the meat from sticking to the foil and getting burned. I like mine plain, John & the kids prefer to put ketchup on theirs.
I normally slice the carrots and celery at home and put them in baggies since they take up less space that way and it’s less prep work I have to do in the camper. Clean up is easy too – we usually just use the foil wrappers as our plates if we’re eating at the picnic table. They might be a little greasy, but nothing that a quick wipe with the dishcloth won’t fix.
Do you have a favorite camping meal?
KOA recently announced the dates of their annual Come Kamp and Care With Us Weekend – May 11 & 12.
From the KOA website
During Come Kamp & Care With Us Weekend, campers can stay at participating KOA campgrounds on Friday, May 11, 2012 as a paying guest and get Saturday night, May 12, 2012 free. During that weekend, many campgrounds offer special activities and events, from Spaghetti dinners and silent auctions to poker runs and rubber ducky regattas, to help raise money to help send children with cancer to summer camp. In 2011 alone, over $425,000 was raised to support this cause.
It’s a great opportunity to enjoy a low cost weekend of camping and support a worthy cause. The campground we stay at has a variety of activities for all ages. Our kids are never bored (and neither are we)! Of course, part of the reason for giving you a free night is so that you will support KOA Care Camps by participating in the activities. They are normally not expensive – ice cream sundaes for $2, tie dyeing t-shirts was around $5 (I think).
It’s the perfect weekend to give KOA a try.
For the record, I am NOT paid by KOA to say any of this, I just really like KOA’s in general and think this is a great cause to support.
The other new weekly feature here on Poppin’ Up Allover is trip ideas. They’re based on where I’ve been camping or where I would like to go camping. First up is Niagara Falls. We went there on our First Long Trip in our pop up. We were only there for three nights and there was so much more to do!! We could’ve easily spent a whole week there! We really only checked out the stuff right around the falls. There were so many other things to see and do. Besides all the fun stuff at the Falls – Maid of the Mist, Cave of the Winds (and the hurricane deck), walking around Goat Island and Three Sisters Islands, there are things to do near by.
One of them is Lockport, NY. There is a tour of a cave and an underground boat ride. Be prepared to do some walking, but it is well worth it! You learn a lot about the history of the canal and the competition between canals and railroads. For instance – supposedly some of the train bridges that have an upside down railing underneath were built that way so that boats could only be stacked so high with cargo. That way businesses would be forced to use trains to transport their goods.
The Niagara Power Project Power Vista with over 50 interactive exhibits looks very interesting.
When we went, we bought the Niagara Falls USA Discovery Pass online thinking that we would be able to skip the line at the Falls. Wrong! What you get is a piece of paper that you take to the ticket stand and get your tickets. I guess it was easier than having to buy them there, but I thought it was a tad misleading (mostly because I didn’t read ALL the fine print). Because we bought them online, we got a free lanyard to carry the tickets in. It covers admission to Niagara: Legends of Adventure Theater (which we didn’t do), Aquarium of Niagara, Cave of the Winds Trip, Discovery Center, and Maid of the Mist.
We took our kids who were almost 2, 4, and 6 at the time on all the tours. The Maid of the Mist was very windy so my daughter (who was terrified of wind) didn’t like it when we got close to the falls. The Cave of the Winds scared my 4 year old and we didn’t take any of them up on the Hurricane Deck.
One of the highlights of the trip (at least for the adults) were the fireworks over the falls! Each night they light up the falls and then on certain nights, they do fireworks. There’s no such thing as a bad seat!
Have you been to Niagara Falls? What was your favorite place there?
One of the things I do is coupon and one of my favorite sites for coupon deals is Money Saving Mom. When we go camping, I try to see what stores are in the area we’ll be so I can see what kind of deals they might have. That way I can save money on the groceries I know we’ll need especially on longer trips. Last year I discovered that KOA does a stay one night, get the next night free. What a deal! I’m waiting to see what weekend it will be this year. So, the other day, a pamphlet from Gettysburg Campground arrived in our mail. We stayed there last year and enjoyed it enough that we’ve talked about going back. Anyway, I was looking through the flyer and the first activity listed is March 30 – April 1 – Clean-Up Weekend. You camp there for the weekend, help with clean up around the campground on Saturday and you get a coupon good for a free night of camping (I’m assuming for use at some point later in the season) plus they provide hot dogs, chips, and drinks for lunch. Of course then I had to read through the rest of the activities to see what would be a good weekend to return. How about Everything Chocolate Weekend? Candy bar bingo, flashlight candy bar hunt, guess the chocolate in a jar, chocolate fountain, smores…that’s my kind of weekend! Of course the Ghostly Encounters/Rubber Ducky Regatta would be good too. I think the kids would enjoy the race a rubber ducky down Marsh Creek and then Saturday night, John would like the paranormal investigation on the campground (for a cost). I think they have something every weekend and it looks like there should be something for everyone!
