Raccoons and more raccoons!

As I was leaving my SILs the other day, I went by her daughter's house. I had seen a photo she had posted on FB about some raccoons near her house and I was curious about them. I had my oldest daughter and granddaughter with me and we were going to stop by for a little while (and see the place where the raccoons were which was along the way) and then go back home (a good two hour drive.)

There's a store near my niece's neighborhood and the raccoons will come out at dusk and beg for food. As we drove up to that side of the parking lot, they were EVERYWHERE! I went inside the store about bought some bread to 'feed' them and they'd come up and stand on their hind legs with their front feet on my legs waiting for me to drop pieces of bread to them. Totally scary! I was imagining their very sharp teeth and claws!

While we were there, it was quite an experience. They were polite...didn't come up and chew my leg or arm off and there weren't too many fights for the food we threw at them. I've never seen that many raccoons in one place in my life!

Of course, I was trying to take pictures!



My niece feeding them.





My daughter feeding them.

Pop-Up Tent Camper

We have some really good friends who have had a pop-up tent camper for a long time. I've heard them talk about it but I had never been in one. We as a family love to go tent camping and love camping in general. I've seen people driving down the road with those pop-ups but have never known what they were actually like. Lo and behold, our friends upgraded and now have an RV so they wanted to sell this camper thing.

I went over to their house one day and took a look at it. It had air conditioning!!! And a heater! There was even a little potty and tiny shower area inside. Tiny. They were both really tiny. But I was impressed that there were anything like that inside!!! There was even a sink! And a stove (that you can take and use outside too.) And a refrigerator (it doesn't work but it's a great place to store stuff.) I had no idea it was like that! We have never camped in the summer (we don't like mosquitos and/or to be really hot and prefer to camp when it's really cold instead for those reasons.)

To make a long story short, we bought it from them!!! Now, all we have to do is plan an overnight or weekend get away to learn how to turn everything on etc. and we'll be more experienced to plan a longer vacation. A really close friend and her family moved to Colorado and we will drive to see them next summer. I am planning a nice long trek that way while stopping by a couple cool state parks along the way.

I'm super excited about all this! It's like a whole new camping kind of world just opened up and we're looking forward to using it!