Bear sighting..It's what you see in the movies

We packed up and headed to Ocala National Forest. We spent a whole week preparing for this trip. We brought along 2 other families, one being a black couple. They are very close friends of ours, but have never been camping. They pull into the driveway and they say "Are we ready?" we head out thinking, "This is going to be interesting." We have a couple here that continue to reiterate the fact that "blacks don't camp" our friend Dave told me "You wait Stacy, I'm going to poll this whole campground and I bet I don't see one black person"  and he continued to say "I better not see any other things that are black either, like black bears." I just kinda laughed and said, "you may or you may not, but either way you are going to have fun." We pull into the campground 2 hours later, and I start looking at their facial expressions, they were quite the abnormal. Jon gets out and starts to look around and realizes we are in Mosquitoville City, not to mention in the middle of the forest. We were graciously greeted by the owners and presented a binder of useful information. On one hand, I felt it was quite good information, but on the other hand, I had friends that didn't quite feel the same. I look at the cover of the binder, it read something like this....

"Welcome to Lake in the Forest...Black Bear Resort" 

I was thinking, oh great. Dave and Kim see the binder and when we opened it up it said "The guide to living in bear country" I started to breathe heavy and kinda panicked, for them I tell you. I continued to remain positive and I said it's all good, lets head over to camp and set up. Kim said "Yea, it's all good for you until we spot a bear, and she chuckled. I tried to give positive conversation pieces, but I'm not thinking they went over as well as I planned. I think we finally got past the whole black bear scare and we unpacked and set up camp.

The kids made themselves at home as the guys continued to set up the tents and gather firewood. The mosquitoes were outrageous and us girls did everything we could to find repellent. As it got later into the evening, our third family arrived and they got all set up as we continued to prepare for our smores and fire stories. The night was prolonged by an array of things and I finally was able to get some sleep about 1:00 am.

We woke up to our 3rd family having all of their bread, donuts and chips that were left in the bed of their truck, demolished. As you can imagine, that started the first of the bear stories. I tried to remain positive and do all I could do to blame it on the coons, but I'm not quite sure how well I pulled that one off. We had a great day doing ceramics with the kids, as we swam, played football and sang karaoke by the fire. As it became dark Saturday night, we all made dough babies over the fire and that was a first for me. Growing up camping all my life, I was pretty sure I had done it all, but a boy scout leader showed me different.

4am and I hear "Hey, Jon man, JON!!!!! Jon jumped up and said "What?" Dave said, "It's Dave man, get up, there is a bear right here in our camp" and we both were thinking he was pulling a joke on us. We unzipped the window in the tent, and son of a gun if there wasn't a black bear about 350-400 lbs sitting just a few feet in front of us. I said, "Dave, where are you?" He said "We are right here watching this bear with some other campers from up the way" Jon grabbed his gun and we proceeded to walk out very quietly and calmly. At this point, all I could help to think was, my raccoon stories were squashed. All I could see was a bear not budging, ransacking our trash can. The other campers came through our camp and brought their dog that continued to bark and bark as the bear slowly scampered away. Did I really just see a black 400 lb bear just a few feet away from me? I was like "KIM, grab your camera and she ran over to her tent and was rummaging through her stuff to find it, as she approached the bear closer, her flash was unable to produce a clear picture. She continued to tell us that this was the 2nd bear they had already encountered this morning, the first one was a bit smaller and he decided to climb on top of Kim's hood of her car and look in her window because he smelled food. So, the bear stories continued all night, as the other families slept through it all.

We really saw a bear!!! The crazy thing was, our friends that we joked about it with and then was handed a book on it, I thought "Nah, bears only invade campsites in the movies" I guess they do until you have to do a bathroom run." We are a week passed our camping trip and the bear stories are still traveling town. It was quite the experience and one I will never forget. I guess I can't tell anyone anymore that they won't see any bears. The kids were sad they missed it, but I'm not.

Braden got mad at Jon while at the campsite, and he ran into the tent and started pouting...Jon said "come here Braden" he said "I'm not coming out until you take the mean face off." 

Have a great week. Hope you have the happy face on!

Stacy
xoxo

Can you take a number please?

That's about how I am feeling right now. I leave for a little mini vacation with a friend of mine, and it seems like I have taken part in a time warp. I go and sit down today and say to myself, "I'm feeling really guilty for not blogging in a month, and then I sign on today and I see that I am not the only guilty victim. OK, so after getting "the" text from my mother-n-law that read "I don't like to criticize, but it is not nice to get someone hooked on your blog and then just stop blogging!" She told me "the only thing saving you is Facebook" I was needless to say, feeling quite culpable and decided I'd better get back in gear of things.

So you ask, what have I been up to? Well, we have had quite the summer thus far. Nickelodeon Hotel was a great escape..Lots of sun,sun and more sun! Camps out the kazoo, and lots of time with the honey. In the midst of it all, I was inspired to loose wight, so on top of all my summer activities that I have been ambushed with, I have managed to eat extremely well and I started the Atkins diet a month ago, and today I am down 10 lbs! Boy is this diet hard, but when you want something SO bad, I guess you will do whatever it requires to get there! SO..on top of my diet, I have been faithfully exercising and keeping busy and am so excited about my accomplishments, I just had to come on a blog a bit and share it with the world!

My summer is far from winding down..my 3rd cousin flew in today from DC, and she is staying with us for a month and Morgan and Skylar are only a year apart, so it's always good to have her. This next month will be a busy one for all of us, as we continue to do all of the fun things that kids do in the summer, on top of gearing up for the fall football season that both boys will be playing in. Jon will be coaching and I will be team mom. Whew, boy do we have a busy half of year left!

Well It's sure nice to be back on here and able to share a little of what has been going on. I have been doing tons of scrap booking and have actually just finished the boys football albums and I just started my vacation theme next, so I am attacking all of our family vacations starting way back when..It's fun and such a great way to cherish the memories.. How is all of your summers been going out there? Anything you just can't wait to talk about? I am hoping to sit down tonight and catch up on all my bloggers...It's good to be back..I promise I wont take this long off again..Truthfully, it wasn't intended to be this long..time just gets away from you...

Braden told me last week "You know what? You are soooo mean...you are mean as the Hulk...(I didn't respond as usual with this type of behavior) so he sat and pondered a minute and he said, Oh yea and you are quite ridiculous, too! It took a while to digest that one!

Have a great week! Some summer pics of the kids below..

S~