Camping at Squam Lake with the Lunds

On Monday, July 13th, we loaded our 3 canoes and our 12 passenger van for a little canoe camping trip to Squam Lake in New Hampshire. The drive to Holderness, NH is about 3 hours from our house.

This is our 4th time to go to Squam Lake, and our 2nd time to go with the Lunds.

This is the Lund's car and their new (to them) canoe. They rented a 2nd canoe at the lake.

Here are the 5 canoes all loaded up with our camping gear for our 4 day camping trip. Our island, Moon Island, doesn't have water or indoor plumbing, so we bring everything ourselves. We bring our own firewood, our own water, tents, sleeping bags, and of course, plenty of camping food!

And here are our intrepid canoers. James is taking the picture, so he's not here, but everyone else is! It takes about 1 1/2 hours of canoeing to get from the docks to our campsite on Moon Island.

Jansen compresses Mack's spine in an effort to tie ropes around trees in high places.

Our island was covered in wild blueberry bushes. We let kids pick the ones on the land, and sent James and the teens and older boys out in canoes to get all of the blueberries hanging off the island over the water. Here are only a few of our picking labors,

And here are our delicious blueberry pancakes.

Mack won the award for the MOST perfect toasted marshmallow.

One day, we canoed out to another place on the lake called Five Finger Point. We've affectionately called it "Jump Off Rock." Let me just say that the rock looks A LOT higher when you're standing on it, jumping into the water.

After jump off rock, we stayed in the water awhile to practice some water ballet moves. Featured in the ballet are Logan, Nadia, Megan, Janessa, and Linda.

Lachlan gets snuggled and warmed in Maha's arms.

Lachlan runs on the dock.

This is the same island that On Golden Pond was filmed at. I always make a point of running and jumping off the dock before we go home; it reminds me of Jane Fonda who starred in the movie.

These pictures are but a small sampling of our great trip. If you're interested in seeing them all, click here.

Good things about the trip:

• We only had about an hour of rain the whole trip. We spent it in our tents, reading and playing card games.
• The canoe trip from Moon Island back to our cars was absolultely calm, peaceful, and amazing. It was the only time our whole trip when we had still water. We made it in a record 42 minutes.
• Janessa and Nadia and Linda went for a midnight swim every night, and then jogged the perimeter of the island each morning.
• We had weather reports and Blackberry access so that we wouldn't get caught in a storm either going there or back!
• Because we came back a day early no one knew we were home, so it was a psuedo-vacation. We went to see Harry Potter all together!
• We didn't capsize! We were all safe! No burns, no major injuries!

Bad things about the trip:

• We came home a day early. The day we had planned to come back was forecast for non-stop rain, and we really didn't want to be paddling all of our gear back in rain and be wet all the way home.
• James got sick. At first he thought he had allergies, but then he ended up running a fever. Mack got the same feverish sick the next day.
• Lachlan: He did NOT sleep well in the tent. He was up much of the night, both nights. Lots of crying. Lots of sadness. We realized after we got home that he'd probably been sick and not feeling great.
• Wind. It was so hard to paddle the canoes in the wind. The whole time we were there, the wind was blowing up 2 foot high waves and a lot of water got blown into the canoes. It took a lot of extra effort to go anywhere.
• Cold: It was pretty cold during the whole trip. We hadn't brought enough warm clothing and we spent a lot of time huddling around the fire. It didn't make us want to go swimming a lot--although we did anyway--we just had to dare each other a lot!
• Mosquitoes. These guys were desperate. The wind helped keep some away, but they were definitely out for blood at Jump Off Rock! We were spraying DEET like it was french perfume!