Camping in Lake Chelan

Last Monday we took off for eastern Washington and some warming weather to go camping at Lake Chelan. We pulled the kids out of school a few days early, to which they were heart broken. :)
We spent one night in a hotel in Wenatchee, which is where Will grew up. The kids enjoyed a little pool and park time.
In the morning, we went to Will's old neighborhood and he shared a few memories of the area with the kids. He grew up with this view just up the street from his house.
Here is the house Will grew up in from 4-18yrs.
We also stopped by his old High School, which was fun for the kids to see.
After that, we headed up the road to Lake Chelan. It was a beautiful 85+ degree day!!
This was the view from our campsite. We had a short trail heading down to the water.
After setting up camp, we got our suits on and headed for the water.
Funny, because the camp was technically full, but it always felt like we had the place to ourselves practically. It was really nice.
Ducks were every where at this camp and we spent lots of time feeding them (probably a big no-no).
My kids always crack me up. Once they are on a beach, they immediately go "industrial" and start some massive engineering project.
Yay for nice weather and nature!!
Morgan was a great camper the whole time. She loves it and is at an age where she can just hang with whatever we are doing.
The campground had a great playground, which is always nice for the kids.
Inside our HUGE tent. The weather was perfect. 80's during the day, but then cooled off nicely in the evening for sleeping.
I gave Morgan a pamphlet for the water park we were heading to the next day. She studied it for a long time by the camp fire. The baby looks pretty excited too, huh?
More duck feeding in the campsite.
Morgan taking her turn doing the breakfast dishes before we headed to the water park for the day. Our kids LOVE the water park. It's the perfect size. Not too big, but has 12+ slides for the kids to play on, plus a pool, hot tub and a splash playground.

We spent most of the day playing. I love going down the slides with the kids, and I was SO PROUD of Peyton going down some of the scary ones. She went down the Purple Haze (which is a dark enclosed tube that is really steep and fast) TWENTY TIMES.
Morgan went on some of the bigger slides, but was also happy on all the small stuff.
She played so hard she came back to the towels once and just passed out. She slept for an hour.
That evening, we headed out for a short walk up the river.
This little trail was about 100 feet from our campsite.
After our walk, we played a little Skip-Bo by the lake.

In the morning, we headed out to explore a few spots. Above is a picture of Chelan Falls, which cascades through a beautiful canyon. The water was SO blue. The picture does not do it justice. We also went up some dirt roads to get to a different part of the falls.
We found ourselves a little beach to play on (when the lake is 55 miles long, there are lots of places to choose from).
It was a little windy, so we found a little wind barricade and started in on a sand castle.

After a few hours of sunshine, we explored a few more places then went back to camp for dinner.......soft tacos!!

After dinner, we went out on another little hike. This one 2.5 miles. I love that my kids are willing and able to hike. This hike took us up the ridge from the lake so we could look back down on it a bit.
We also saw some wildlife.

The view from the ridge was beautiful.
Nothing like an after dinner walk in the sunset! :)

So fun to watch Morgan experience things for the first time.
So.....this is kind of a funny story. We often use the timer on our camera to catch family pictures. This particular time, I was setting it up on a rock and a few ants started crawling on the rock and even on the camera. I was laying down (we were on a big hill) and I felt them start to crawl on other parts of me. I yelled, "Okay, let's do this before I get over ran with ants." I pushed the button and ran back over to the family and as I looked back at the camera, I saw that I had been laying ON AN ANT HILL!!! It was covered!! I couldn't get the feeling of ants crawling all over me to go away. Ehh!! It was terrible.
Heading back to camp.
Last night with our camp fire. We happened to be camping on the longest days of the year, so the kids got lucky with very late bedtimes.
On our way home, we stopped in Leavenworth for lunch. We found this little stage by the river and the girls had such a good time putting on little shows for us. Morgan's pose above is hysterical.
We are loving having slightly older kids. It seems like we can do more and more together with out the hassles of diapers, feedings and naps. The kids were fantastic this trip and we all can't wait to go again. We are thinking about making Chelan an annual thing.
It was a great trip and it was so nice to step away from our daily duties and just love on each other for several days. We love camping!!