Labor Day Weekend 2015

For years our famiy has gone camping "up the Clackamas River"over Labor Day weekend.  I can't remember when we started doing this, but for sure I remember looking at the entrance of our tent and seeing two year old Malcolm sitting at the entrance wanting to come out rather than going to bed.  That makes it at least 25 years.

For the longest time we went to Alder Flat which is a walk in campground which is about a one and a half mile hike to the campground.  That was fine until we got so many grand-kids that the logistics of carrying all the necessary gear became too great.  For two years we switched to River Ford Campground which was good except that the sites couldn't be reserved, and so to be assured that we'd get three spaces close together, someone had to go up on a Wednesday and "occupy" the sites.  This year we tried a different place, Riverside Campground, which has, along with traditional drive in sites, five walk in sites where you park and then walk just a short distance to the campsite.  It worked very well!  We reserved four sites that were adjacent and far enough from the car camping people that we didn't even know they were there.  We were really isolated - it was great, we could be as noisy as we wanted and knew that we were not annoying the car campers.  The best thing was that there was access to potable water from a hand pump.

We had a total of 27 people.

Dad and I

Jessica and family

Beverly and family

Travis and family

Warren - without Whitney....sniff

Malcolm and family - for one day

Katie Walsh and family

Dolores - for one day

Here is the big group smoreing,

Baby shots

Kids

Woodchopping

adults

Hammock games

water sports

Cooking Crew

We all had a get time, didn't we?  Yeah it rained but we had our trusty humongous green tarp which has served us well many times.  

Next year we can go to Riverside again or to Kingfisher.  Kingfisher has better access to a smaller river and really nice car camping sites.  But, we'd have to intermingle a bit with non family members.  I think we should go to Riverside again.  If you have an opinion.