S24O to Homestead Park

This is something of a record for me: three S24O trips in four weeks. This weekend, our local township had their yearly family campout at Homestead Park in Hilliard. We were ready to hit the road on Friday after dinner:

It was about nine miles to the park: I knew Henry could do that kind of distance on his own bike, which is what allowed me to take all three kids... no way I could pull all three with all our camping gear!



Since we would be putting in a few road miles on this trip, I put a safety flag on Henry's bike. With the strong crosswind we were facing, the flag bent over into the travel lane:

Not the greatest courtesy on the bike path (where I bent it back), but it worked well on the road to guarantee clearance from drivers.

With only a few short breaks, we arrived at Homestead Park and made our camp:

Then it was off to play:

Kate is easy to spot:

Homestead Park is home to two of the Dublin Arts Council's Riverbox samples. I read the clues off my phone, and the kids quickly found the first one:

and then the other:

We only have three or four more of these left to find.

Then it was back to the playground:

 

Of course, we had to have s'mores:

And we also explored the caboose that was at the park:

There seemed to be fewer families here than last year, but it's still a nice site for a campout:

Then we tucked in for the night. My new four man tent gave us plenty of room, and I decided again to leave the rain fly off for the forecasted clear night (no rain, this time)

Crazy haired Kate:

Sweet Sam:

(I didn't have any kind of small pillow for Sam, so we made do with his stuffed hippo)

Hidden Henry:

Actually, all three kids spent much of the night hidden in their bags: with the temp dipping down into the high 40s, our summer weight bags were just adequate. But overall it was wonderful weather for our trip, so I'm certainly not complaining.

Saturday morning, we hit the road after a cold breakfast. We stopped in Amlin to swap the twins between the trailer and the trail-a-bike:

I'm appreciating my basket more and more:

It's great for sloppy, last minute overloading. Not that I encourage over packing, but it's nice to be able to break camp and not puzzle how everything has to go back together just so.

And of course we had to stop for breakfast:

Maybe this will be the year I actually hit my target for six nights out bike camping. We're certainly off to a strong start!