Last week, my family and I (minus one kid at camp) went on a very frugal one night/two day camping trip that started off quite eventfully. I was in an incredible amount of pain once I got home and even more so the next day after I needed to do a lot more driving yet again, so it has taken a few days (and two physical therapy appointments and a pain releiving shot at urgent care) to be able to sit up and actually write this post. (Yes, the pain really was that bad.)
In my previous post I ended by sharing that, in the morning, the kids went and swam in the lake, so I’ll continue from where I left off.
Earlier this year I wrote about a frugal girls’ trip and mentioned stopping at a waterfall at the edge of a lake. When I was asked to make a foraging trip in this area, I wasn’t familiar with the area and didn’t know where to start.
But I knew that I needed a place that would have greenery and enough water for there to be a variety of plant life growing in the middle of a dry summer. I figured, having been to this place, there was a likelihood that I’d find that. If it didn’t have it, I’d have to start hunting around, taking away from my time to have fun with my kids, so I really hoped I’d find what to forage there.
My kids had fun playing in the waterfall there. And while I wasn’t supposed to get my foot wet because of my stitches… it ended up getting wet accidentally, after which I said screw it, and just ended up enjoying the water.
We let the water in the waterfall pour over our heads…
And there was even a little cave behind the waterfall that my kids climbed into for me to photograph them.
And, while at first, I wasn’t seeing much by way of edible plants that were in season, but as I looked around I found some great plants.
I saw this plant that was a dead ringer for purslane other than the color of its flowers, but it turns out it is actually water hyssop, also known as bacopa, another family entirely, but also edible and very medicinal, but also quite bitter.
The main star of our class will be the watercress I found growing all over. There’s another plant that is most likely fool’s waterecress or “wild celery” but I’m waiting to find out for absolute certain before I teach that.
After seeing that the location was great for my foraging class, it was time to go canoeing.
My kids had never been canoeing before. They’d been on what is called locally “kayaking” but is really inflatable raft type stuff with kayak paddles. I wanted to teach them how to canoe. Canoeing is my happy place, and I have so many positive childhood memories of our canoe trips down the Cuyahoga River near Cleveland. I loved it so much that on my 4 day trip to Cleveland a few years back, in addition to two days spent on getting my drivers’ license, we spent another day going canoeing and then to Nelson’s Ledges to rock climb.
It also brings back memories of sleep away camp, one year canoeing down a river in upstate New York and another year going on a 4 day canoeing and camping trip on lakes in the Algonquin Park in Canada. Such nostalgia.
It was really great being on the water again.
I used a coupon through my debit card company so it cost $70 for the 4 of us to canoe on two separate canoes; one more kid would have cost $15 more.
We had a picnic lunch before we went on the boat, and then we were given an hour and a half to swim upstream then come back down, but when I asked if they were strict about the time, they said no.
There was basically no current, because of dams on both ends of the course, which meant it was very easy to paddle. I loved being able to teach my children how to steer, navigate, etc… in a low pressure environment, without needing to worry about rapids or being pushed places where we didn’t want to be.
At a certain point, we pulled our canoes over to a bank of the river and got out to go swimming, life jackets on, of course, since the river was deep in some areas.
There was a rope swing off a tree that two of my kids had the guts to climb up and swing off of, since it was really high up and a bit of a scary climb to get to the part of the tree where the swing reached, but once they did that, it was really fun for them.
There was a family who was quite inexperienced with boating, and they managed to capsize their canoe, so we helped them rescue their things, flip their boat over and empty it from water, and then helped them get back into it. It was nice to put my skills from years of practice into use, not to mention being able to help a family in need.
The trip was just so pleasant, it was a shame when our arms started getting tired and we needed to return the canoes (well over an hour and a half). But I definitely have a new favorite place in my country, and I definitely will be returning here, the next time with all my kids.
After that, it was time to drive home.
The canoeing was really the only expense of the entire trip, other than the food we brought, since gas was paid for by my foraging clients.
All in all, this was a wonderfully frugal summer fun adventure and vacation. Totally worth it, even if we’d had to pay for gas as well.
Have you taken any vacations frugally this summer so far? What did you do? Do you enjoy camping? Canoeing? Does this look like a trip you’d enjoy?
One Response
You guys look so happy! Congrats on what sounds like a successful, fun and relatively frugal family trip.