Camping @ Hard Labor Creek

Oops, fell off the wagon quickly there.

For real though, we've been crazy busy. June is slap full and I"m ready for July just for a moment to breathe.

Moving on...

One thing I really want to do is start blogging about our camping adventures. I get asked questions constantly about our camping and don't at all mind answering them, but I'm thinking it's easier to cover them all with a blog post.

I have a few to catch up on, but for now, I'm going to start with our latest trip. 

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The first weekend of June, we headed out on one of our latest camping adventure.  When we bought our camper last year, we made an agreement with each other, that we'd try our best to use it at least once a month to justify having a monthly payment. So far, we've done pretty well with that goal and have only missed one month, but that means that some months it's just quick trip close to home and that's just what this one was. 

We had heard that Hard Labor Creek State Park in Rutledge, GA is a favorite with a lot of people and it's only an hour from home, so it's been at the top of our list. 

It's a smaller state park and there is less than 60 sites, so when we went to make reservations a month ago, there were only a handful still available. Luckily, we got the last two available that were next to each other. 

The sites were big and most had a nice deck area attached to them.  Overall, the park was beautiful. It was pretty shaded and everything was super green from all the rain we had gotten over the last week....Thanks, Alberto!

When we had got there, it had started pouring down rain, but thankfully we've become pros at getting our camper and site completely set up and ready to party in less than an hour.  Thankfully we were rewarded with a rainbow right above our campsite.

I have to say my favorite part of the weekend was the fact they had so many activities planned for the kids throughout the weekend. The AmeriCorps happened to be there and hosted majority of the activities. We took full advantage (can we say extra school days!) and became well known with the AmeriCorps volunteers by the end of the weekend.

On Friday night they offered Smore's, we learned about constellations, and heard Greek mythology. Saturday morning David and Livi attending an archery class where they also learned how to start fires with a flint and properly use a compass to find their way out of the woods. That afternoon we hit up a lake ecology class and arts & crafts. Sunday morning they had an animal presentation where the kids could be hands on with animal furs and skeletons. So, the girls stayed busy all weekend and it was all educational...a win-win in my book!

One of the things we were looking forward to was the park had nice beach on the lake.  We figured it would be a great way to keep cool with the hot temps and keep the girls entertained. Unfortunately though it was still apart of the park, it was a ten minute drive from the campsite, so that was kind of a bummer.  We assumed it would be where we could just ride our bikes over. We did make it over that way for a couple of hours Saturday afternoon. The girls had fun, and it was a great way to get cool after spending the afternoon in the sun.

Sunday morning we headed to the last program the Ameri-Corps was offering and of course, made another craft. The girls had been begging to play putt-putt all weekend, so we then headed to play a round, but of course Millie acted like a fool on the second tee....Nana & I decided to go ahead and have fun despite her four year old ways. Thank goodness we didn't have to pay for her to play!😁

It did get a little hot on Sunday afternoon, so Paw came to the rescue with running to the Dollar General and getting a baby pool for the girls to stay cool in. They had a blast till Livi took a head dive tumble down the hill next to our patio area.  Thankfully she was okay, but then took a hard dive off her bike just an hour later. A couple of weeks later and her battle scars from that weekend are still trying to heal.

Nana & Paw headed home late that night, while we stayed an extra night to give David a little extra time that afternoon, since he commuted back & forth to work that Sunday. To be honest, it wasn't my absolute favorite campground and I probably wouldn't be back anytime soon, but we still had a great weekend.

Campground Review: 3/5 stars

Favorites:
~Big shaded sites with nice decks.
~Lots of programs offered for guest.
~Close to the cute towns of Rutledge & Madison GA. (Don't go on Sunday though because everything is closed...we learned the hard way)
~Nice, helpful staff.

Dislikes:
~Only two bathhouses and spaced far out....we had to walk pretty far to the closest one.
~LOTS of bugs.
~The beach was a good drive from the campground
~Too hilly to ride bikes and everything was spaced out.