Big Run State Park

The girls and I went to Big Run State Park this past weekend. We had a long weekend so we decided to head to beautiful slightly mountainous Western MD. It is the most mountains the girls have seen so far anyway. We had a wonderful time... even saw a bobcat. I've never seen one in the wild! The girls played so well and so imaginatively in the woods and in the stream... I never heard the words "I'm bored" once. Rebecca even spent a goodly amount of time rolling around on a muddy hillside, completely content. Natalie made some kind of fairy stew she called Fish Mash, using rocks to cut up weeds from the stream. She did that for at least an hour. The children had so much fun playing in the mountain stream that Rebecca started to cry on the way home, saying "I miss the campsite." They begged for a longer trip. Of course we will do it. We'll also have to read Thomas Locker's Where the River Beginsnow.




Actually, another river book comes to mind also. We drove past a huge paper mill on our way to the park (in the town of Luke MD) which reminded me of A River Ran Wild: An Environmental Historyby Lynne Cherry. This is an EXCELLENT book and a true story to boot. Click here for some suggested curriculum activities to accompany it.




We've done well with our slow course into Camping with a capital C. This time we were a little farther from the bathroom (and they had composting toilets instead of flush and no showers) and it was quite a walk to the potable water for refilling our water bottles. We took two campsites (71 and 72). 71 was a double so we could set up both tents but it didn't have a picnic table so we paid for 72 also and the girls ran back and forth and we had a sleeping part and an eating part. They have black bears there but we didn't have any trouble.

When I got home my face felt all full of grit so I went online to look up cheap homemade facial scrubs and found a great one. Equal parts sugar and extra virgin olive oil. You can easily make this an organic homemade facial scrub by using organic sugar (I used turbinado since it was what I had on hand) and organic EVOO. Simple, easy. 1 tsp of each ought to do it for one shower. Then wash with your cleanser and moisturize in the regular way. Worked great.