First Camping Trip

We took our first camping trip with Elise, and it's actually the first time we've camped in NC as well. We haven't pulled out the gear since we lived in MN. Jodi, Elise, Bailey and I drove up the last Friday in July to the Boone KOA campground. We set up the tents and went to the grocery store to buy snacks for the campfire. We planned a 1 night trip, so that we could get away with a minimal time investment, and if it went badly, we were only there for a little over 24 hrs. Elise was very excited about the zippered screens on the tents & crawling in to lay on the sleeping bags. She also figured out how to get up on one of the lawn chairs all by herself...again, who knew she could do this?
We got a carryout pizza from Papa John's on Friday night & had s'mores & pies around the fire...and then muffins, fruit & coffee from a Boone coffeehouse & McDonald's pancakes & eggs for breakfast. Yes, it wasn't "really" the full camping experience, but we didn't want to have to bring so much for this trip.
There was live bluegrass music, a little farm animal area with real chickens & goats, and friendly folks....but we could tell we were in the mountains of the south!
Sleeping the the tent with a 1 year old was a little challenging. She fell asleep OK, but sometime around 3am, she rolled off the air mattress which woke her up enough to see that mom & dad were right there. From then on, it seemed that she was moving back and forth between us...so none of us slept very well. Curt's comment the next day was that he was so sore, he felt as though he had worked out all night!
The next day we drove back through Blowing Rock & enjoyed some barbeque at Woodland's, and then drove the Blue Ridge Parkway - but you can see from the picture that we ran into some rainy weather. We drove to Linville Falls, and by the time we got there and parked, it was clear and we did a small hike. Elise was teething, and so it was a little trying, but we all made it! After our hike, we headed back to Charlotte. All in all....not a bad first camping trip with a toddler...but it was certainly more work!