Bad Bear Campground

Just like last year, the Fourth of July got us excited to go camping again. We decided it would be fun to camp with family, so we invited Mandi's family and BJ to join us. My aunt Kathy and her friend Loris also happened to be in town, so they came up and spent the day with us.

We wanted to go somewhere close so decided on Idaho City. Plus, that gave us an excuse to have lunch at Trudy's Kitchen and to walk around historic Idaho City. I loved walking the streets and seeing the old buildings - the location of Idaho's first newspaper, the old jail, the old saloon and storehouse, etc.

A lot of the campgrounds near Idaho City were already booked, so I booked a site at Bad Bear Campground, about 11 miles north of Idaho City. We totally lucked out. There are six sites at that campground, most of which are right off the highway, but I booked the one large site there and it was set back off the road so we had some great privacy. Our site also happened to be really close to the bathroom and water pump!

The kids had fun making a dam (which Kylee continued to call "damage" for some reason) in the creek next to our campsite. Mandi and TJ also did a little gold panning.

We made s'mores.

We went on a small hike.

We roasted hotdogs and drank soda and made dutch oven cobbler.

The kids kept cool by playing with squirt guns.

And we all had a lovely time relaxing and enjoying being in nature.