Today is Monday July 4th and I woke up to a nice surprise. As I fumbled around making coffee and trying not to wake the kids, Michelle told me that while I was asleep, she had figured out where we were going. She had woken up in the middle of the night and researched different options on Riley's ipod Touch. As we had talked about heading north, Michelle started looking for the most family-friendly campgrounds near the Poconos and stumbled upon a place called Lake Keen in PA. Lake Keen campground is run by SEVEN sisters and it has been in their family for generations. So we called, told them we were coming and packed up for a four hour trip (compared to last year, four hours seems like nothing).
We headed up Rt. 15 past Gettysburg (there is a very nice KOA here as well), past Harrisburg and onto Rt. 81 which took us past Hershey and ultimately thru Scranton. The PA countryside is beautiful and although each town somewhat resembles the one before, they each have their own 'personality' if you are paying attention. Most of the towns in this part of the state are (or were at one point) centered around some type of mill or factory which supported the vast majority of families around it. As we lumbered past them from the highway we would try to find the old mills and wonder if everyone in these little isolated towns knew each other.
Around 2pm...after going up and up and up...we turned in to the Lake Keen campground and were thrilled by Michelle's 'discovery' of such a neat place. The registration for the campground sits on a large beautiful lake with tons of boats, a sandy beach, basketball courts, a big pool and people just having fun. Riley and Brock are now getting old enough where one of the things that gives them the most pleasure is being able to do some exploring on their own. We try hard to find places that give them an opportunity to take off on their bikes and have a little 'freedom' which maybe is harder to find at home. I remember camping with my family as a kid and my brothers and I (sorry Cat, you were still too young) would bounce out of the RV feeling like explorers.
After getting settled, we all headed straight for a lake where a nice swim seemed to be the answer to our prayers. The weather forecast for this area says 80 and sunny all week and after our swim we knew this would be another fun adventure. We also decided that our good fortune deserved a good dinner so we set about BBQ'ing peppers, asparagus and a salmon fillet to go along with a big watermelon. We asked the staff to point us in the direction of the best fireworks in the area and they unanimously suggested Lake Wallenpawpack (sp?) which was about 25 minutes away. Around 8 we started winding through the Norman Rockwell-esque little towns between us and the fireworks and found a little ice cream shop on the outskirts of town. Along with a few dozen other families we grabbed some ice cream and sat down to watch the fireworks (which were amazing). Last year we did almost the same thing at some little town in South Dakota and have great memories of that experience. I wonder where we,ll be next year!?
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