Yale Lake Camping Trip.

Can every weekend be a long weekend? Seriously. Whoever decided 2 days of weekend is long enough is crazy. CRAZY.

After our last camping trip with the Hobie, we knew we had found a new love. Combining two of our favorite things = MAGIC. So we found a lake that was a little closer to home and made reservations a month in advance. Thank goodness, because it seems like everyone else had the same idea ;)

Our campsite was AMAZING. Seriously. We were on the first "row" so we could see the water and we had tons of privacy because of all the trees and bushes. I'm obsessed with it and next time we stay here we will be staying at A38 again. Definitely.

The beach was MUCH better than our last trip for beaching the Hobie. It was rocky, but the water levels were high enough so we didn't have to hike a mile out to our boat like last time ;)

can you spot Landon?

The campsite had a boat ramp too, which was SUPER convenient. So we got to the campsite Saturday afternoon, set up camp and then rigged the Hobie and sailed her over to her beach. Well, Landon sailed it while I drove the trailer back to our campsite. Well, I attempted to drive the trailer back to our campsite but hit a tree and broke our trailer (don't worry, Landon fixed it. Have I mentioned how I'm Wreck it Ralph and he's Fix it Felix? It's true.)

We were pretty tired after all that, so we went on a walk, built a fire and had dinner, and then basically called it a night. It was actually pretty cold too, so we were anxious to get into our cozy sleeping bags! (P.S. Puppies make great heaters!)

On Sunday we woke up early (thank you children and birds...), had breakfast, and then set out for an early morning sail. It was chilly, but we had our wetsuits on so we actually stayed pretty warm. My sunglasses got knocked off my face within 5 minutes by the darn ropes, but luckily it was overcast all day so I didn't have to squint too much. Normally I would have been praying for blue skies, but I was grateful for the cloud cover! :)

We sailed upwind across the lake and had to tack every few minutes because of the wind direction. It was really good practice and I feel like we really got into a groove. I LOVE how fast the Hobie sails and how relaxing it is to be out on the water with my love. We left the boys at our campsite for a few reasons. 1. I worry that we would capsize and how freezing they would be in the water 2. It's kind of hard to sail the boat when you are holding two puppies. But of course the whole time I missed them and wondered how they were doing. Haha, I know I'm crazy. But they're my children.

We sailed the entire lake and made it pretty dam close to the dam. See what I did there? Haha I just love dam jokes. So much. Landon was getting pretty dam sick of my dam jokes by the end of the day. HAHA! I'm so funny ;)

After our little adventure (it took us 3.5 hours to sail to the end of the lake and back! The lake is about 9 miles long, so we covered about 18 miles!) we decided to relax. We ate lunch and then Landon took a little nap while I read my book. (P.S. Go read "The Selection" series. Like right now. SOOOO cheesy, but gosh I'm obsessed)

Have you seen anything sweeter?! I could cuddle with my boys ALL day!!!

After relaxing a bit, Landon went out for a sail by himself. He likes to practice single-handing the boat and I like to watch so I can take pictures/video :) The wind was pretty strong at this point and he was just zooming across the lake.

I looked down to help Henry, who somehow got his leash stuck under a rock, and then I looked up and saw this.

I immediately started bawling and basically went into complete panic mode. I felt so helpless and had NO idea what to do. If you read about the last time we capsized here, you'd understand why I was freaking out so bad. Landon and I basically don't weigh enough to get the Hobie un-capsized. So last time the fire department came out to help us... it was a rough day. So you can imagine why I was hysterical about Landon being out there by himself... I saw a boat go over to him and then leave, so I figured he must have told them he was fine.

Luckily, he's a smart boy and after we capsized the boat last time we installed some new things on our boat to help us for next time. Catamaran sailboats are known to capsize--it's a very common thing. So it's not a good thing if we can't right the boat by ourselves! So we got a "mast float" which does exactly what it says... you put it on the top of your mast and then your mast will stay floating instead of having your boat flip completely upside-down or get stuck in the mud (like ours did last time). The second thing he did was build a righting pole. Basically you use the pole to climb WAY out so you can get more leverage to right the boat.

The pole is that black thing on the front of our boat with two gray squares on either side.

Good news you guys... IT WORKED!! I was SCREAMING when I finally saw him get the boat upright. I can't even tell you how relieved I was. I was just about to walk over to the dock and ask someone if they could bring me out there to help him and as I was walking away I saw it LIFTING. Thank heavens! I was so proud of Landon!

I got the whole thing on video, but it's kind of hard to hear with the wind...

Anyway, Landon was in great spirits when he got back to the beach. He wasn't even cold, because luckily he decided to wear his wetsuit even though it wasn't nearly as cold as it was that morning. He was also SO happy to see that our mast float and righting pole WORKED. We've been wanting to capsize the boat on purpose to test them, but we didn't want it to capsize when he was by himself! But now we don't need to worry about capsizing at all. YAY!

So we got back to camp, went on a little walk, made a fire, had some dinner, and played games.

Landon made the most PERFECT teepee fire. He didn't camp a lot growing up, so he's really trying to perfect the whole building a fire thing. He's doing great :)

And seriously, he couldn't be any cuter....

I don't know why, but I always take a picture of my s'mores haha :)

 I LOVE my sweet boys!

Being outside enjoying quality time with my little family... it just doesn't get any better!

We woke up Monday morning, had breakfast, and went for another walk. It's so fun to watch our boys explore :) They LOVE camping. Then we went for a little sail before bringing our boat in and de-rigging her and then taking down camp.

We really had the BEST weekend. It was so nice to have TWO nights at the campsite because we weren't rushed at all. We were able to sail but we also had a lot of downtime to hang out, read, nap, and go on walks. It was perfect. Now we are excited to go back to Yale Lake in the summer when it's actually warm ;)