SugarB: The Best Camping Trip EVER

So we decided to go camping with some friends of ours. Out to Fort Davis, TX. An 8 hour drive...you heard it...8 hours. We were excited. Taking the trailer...driving the excursion.

Our friends were late getting out so we took off. Somewhere...out there...in West Texas...we ran out of gas! In West Texas....where there's nothing.

Luckily, we managed to coast into a very nice rest area. And when I say coast I mean literally the vehicle had died and we were rolling down the hill on pure momentum (I think someone was praying in the backseat)!

We called our friends who were 2 hours behind us and told them

A: stop and fill up their tank at town X or they'd run out of gas at the same place we had and
B: when you stop and get gas can you, oh, say, buy an extra can and bring it to us?

Fortunately a very kind TX DOT employee who was checking on a maintenance crew at the rest stop decided he didn't like us sitting out there in 105 degree heat with our 2 year old and called the TX DOT maintenance yard the next town over to bring us some Diesel. They were awesome and we were out of there in 20 minutes.

Never having been to Ft. Davis or Davis Mountains State Park we weren't sure what to expect. It is West Texas after all and we were seeing a lot of flat, flat, flat brown desert. So imagine our surprise when we hit the turnoff:

Mountainous type formations. I know...nothing like the mountains in Colorado...but this is desolate West Texas!

And thus began what our kids describe as "the best camping trip ever!"

After a very long and yet highly interesting tour of the remains of Ft. Davis, the dads took the kiddos on a hike up behind the fort.

What a great view!

More hiking the next day. This was the all guy hike. The girls...well we took naps, had showers, laid around, read "Twilight". The guys called us when they were near the Indian Lodge to come meet them for lunch.

Josh sitting above the Indian Lodge...a resort type lodge built by the CCC

At lunch Carlie discovered Luke!

And decided....she really really liked Luke!

Lucky lucky Luke!!!

The next morning Gary, Patrick and our boys went to the top of a mountain to see the spectacular sunrise...

..and had an hour to entertain themselves because we all forgot that we were right on the line of the Central and Mountain Time Zones and the sun came up an hour later than what we expected.

But it was worth the wait!!!

The University of Texas has an observatory 13 miles from the state park

This is one of the giant telescopes

The tour guide decided it was a great idea to let the kids on the tour rotate the giant and very expensive telescope (did I hear the words million and dollars in the same sentence??)

Innocent looking tour guide....does not know what could happen when you get Michael and Jared together

Then we tried to do the star party at the observatory. Two nights in a row it was cloudy so we didn't get to see any stars. We went inside for an astronomy movie and lecture series.