The Knutson Family Adventure

Our stay in Key Largo, Florida was at a State Park called John Pennekamp Coral Reef park.  We ended up staying at this park for a total of two weeks and it was pretty amazing.  The park is one of the only underwater state parks and is made up of miles of coral reef.  We bought everyone a mask and snorkel and spent an hour or two every day at the beach exploring the coral reef close to the shore.  There were tons of cool looking fish and a shipwreck replica that was close enough for us to go and explore.  There were also some enormous fish (Tarpin)  swimming around in the water where we were exploring which freaked us all out a little.  There were lots of trails and mangrove forests on shore that we were able to explore as well.  One of the days we were there, the kids and I signed up to go on a bird and butterfly nature walk with a park ranger.  She took us through the forest trail, pointing out different trees, butterflies and birds and then she showed us an old fruit orchard where mangoes, avocados, and key limes were still growing.  We were even able to collect key limes that were ripe and brought them home with us.  We ended up making a fresh key lime pie with the limes that we had collected ourselves.  That was pretty cool. And delicious.

                       

Eric took the kids fishing many times while we were at the park.  He even got up early in the morning a couple of times to take Haydn and Ada out because he had heard from the locals that there were lots of fish biting in the morning.  They didn’t catch anything that they brought home to eat, but they did catch a few little fish and crabs and the kids had lots of fun.

                    

                      

We celebrated Ada’s birthday while we were in Key Largo.  She requested Lasagna, Caesar salad and garlic bread for supper, and a red velvet cake for dessert.  For one of her gifts we bought her an underwater camera which we though would be awesome to take pictures of all the cool underwater sights.  It is hard to believe that our sweet, little baby is 10 years old already!

       

 

 

We’ve been a several places, climbed on some rocks, walked on some beaches, ridden trains and subways, walked about some cites and climbed on some rocks.

I took a few minutes to grab snippets from each place, roll’em all together and reminisce on the places we’ve been these first few months. Join me in a walk down memory lane, while together we enjoy some blurry shots, shaky cam and the melodic tones of Closet Face, by Copy

HeyY’all!

Just thought since we are getting into the southern states, I needed to say that.  I can’t guarantee that I won’t say it again either…

So our stay in North Carolina was at Foothills Family Campground in Forest City.  Eric has the idea in his head that he just wants to head for Florida ASAP, so our two stops in NC and GA were just quick stays on our way down.  The kids and I took a day off from regular homeschooling to go to an interactive children’s museum for the day, but that was pretty much the only thing we went to do in North Carolina.

Our stop in Georgia was at Walkabout Camp and RV Resort in Woodbine.  We were pretty close to the coast at this stop so we took the day Saturday to explore the beach.  We went to Jekyll Island where there were beautiful beaches and a Turtle Sanctuary.  It has been a while since we have been to the coast or a beach so we were all excited to spend a day exploring.  The water was warm and the kids had lots of fun jumping through the big waves.

   

We also went out for some Southern BBQ at The Copper Pig.  They also just so happened to have live alligators that you could buy food for and feed!

 

We stayed at Skyline Ranch RV resort in Front Royal Virginia for this leg of our journey.  The park had a petting zoo with goats, pigs, chickens, horses and llamas which the kids had a blast feeding every day we were there.  There was a really nice big outdoor pool which just happened to still be open (and Ada and Haydn were crazy enough to swim in).  We also met some really nice people who we exchanged emails with and might see again on a stop down the road.

This place was just a few minutes from the Shenandoah National Park in the Blue ridge mountains.  We drove through part of the park on the Skyline drive and drove up so high that we were walking through the clouds.  There were lots of look out points with amazing views.

  

 

On the weekend we took a day to drive into Washington D.C.  We should have stayed in the city for a day or two, because there was so much to see and do, and so much of it was free!  My frugal heart was so happy!  We ended up only having time to go the the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History and then walking around to see the Washington Monument and the Lincoln Memorial,  but there were so many other museums and galleries and a zoo that were all free to get in.  We rode a train into downtown Washington and back and Eric wanted me to tell you about our lovely ride back to our truck.  It was pretty busy the day we went because there was some sort of baseball game going on (we don’t follow sports..) so as we were waiting to catch a train out of the city we were watching the cars as they went past to find one that seemed like there was room for all of us.  We saw one and headed for it.  We quickly discovered the reason for the emptyish car once we got to it…someone had left a little present on the floor for all to enjoy.  We were already in though and just sat down and tried not to look at it for the ride home.  Eric took a picture of us sitting near it…I thought he was just taking a regular train picture, but he wanted to document the lovely vomit as well.

                                                                                                                                                                                  Haydn lost a tooth while we were waiting to get in to the museum, so we compared it to the T-Rex tooth!

 Ewwwww.

While we were here we also celebrated Canadian Thanksgiving.  I was worried about cooking a big traditional Thanksgiving dinner in our tiny little kitchen and tiny stove, but it turned out pretty great if I do say so myself!  I ended up just getting a big chicken because I wasn’t able to find a turkey and I didn’t think one would fit in our little stove anyway.  So we had chicken, mashed potatoes, buns, squash, green bean casserole, and stuffing.  Our kitchen was a bit of a disaster afterwards but it was delicious and made enough to feed us for two meals and I even made a pot of soup a few days later with the bones.  We had Chocolate Peanut Butter Banana Cream Pie for dessert which we shared with our nice neighbours.