Camping and Knitting

I managed to knit a bit on Charlotte this week. I am almost ready to start the last color, whew.

The Koigu yarn is so beautiful, see how it looked in my green camping chair cupholder?

The camping was fun, but exhausting of course. I don't know why I thought it would be a breeze to take three kids by myself. Of course I had help from my friend (whose dh is a park ranger and who lives in the state park). They let me borrow their camper and set it up for me.

Here's a shot of Lake Chickamauga, Harrison, TN.

Ds and I were hiking and stumbled upon a Great Blue Heron and scared him away -- this is what they look like.

These are amazing looking birds, they stand stock still to catch a fish and then swallow it whole. Ds can't stop talking about it. They're big and it's breathtaking watching them fly from close up. We also saw deer, racoons, a hummingbird, and a blue bird that was either a bluebird or an indigo bunting.

This is what we saw on our hike:

Poison ivy everywhere. My friend the ranger told me that poison ivy is the number one groundcover in TN forests right now. I read an article a while back that pinned it on global warming, saying that warmer winters allow the poison ivy to come back every year. Luckily we managed to avoid it, but I was a nervous wreck on the hike, yelling at ds to stay on the trail the whole time.

It rained every day, and my screen tent got ruined in a windstorm. I am glad to be back home.