holiday camping trips

My love of camping can definitely be attributed to my parents influence; so what better way to celebrate Father's Day than by camping? (Mother's Day would be equally appropriate if my Mother-in-law were as into camping as my family). Most years we do some sort of camping activity but this year Dad was working so much that I didn't really expect to be able to camp so we didn't reserve anything until the last minute. and by then none of the more local state parks had anything available that met our needs.  Mom works second shift so we needed somewhere reasonably local so I chose a private rv park (Western Village) in Carlisle.  I forgot to check the Carlisle events calendar and was worried when we realized we were going during the rescheduled Spring Carlisle event. I'd sat through horrible car show traffic in grad school and was sure this would be the same but fortunately I was pleasantly surprised.  The first night we had neighbors on both sides of our campsites but they left early Saturday so it felt more roomy than the sites really are.  The only thing we really did other than relax and spend time as  a family was to visit the Army Heritage Center's military history trail.  I've visited parts before for grad classes and once Dad walked the trail while I did research but we'd never done the full trail, and we missed a section this time too.  

Our Saturday dinner was a low country boil.

Since I'm so late writing I figured I may as well also include the 4th.  We were lucky to get sites at Promised Land State Park last minute.  I think both the campground and day use area reached capacity during our visit.  The big attraction at Promised Land is the lake, but we were surprised that most of the lakefront property is privately owned and the day use area was so crowded that we didn't really relax there.  We did discover a wildlife viewing area that was less crowded but we didn't spend much time there either.  Overall I was a little disappointed because I expected to be able to spend more time relaxing on the water and found our campsite to be more relaxing.  I do want to return when the museum is open and take our kayaks (more accurately we'll probably go with my parents and my husband will relax with puppy while I kayak with them) and visit the CCC museum, which was closed during our visit.  I don't think the next visit will be on a holiday weekend.  I also think I'll try for a site in Pickerel Point as those sites seemed larger and were closer to the lake.