Camping With My Pal Yogi

Last week I took my family on our first camping trip. We spent three nights at the awesome Yogi Bear's Jellystone Park Camp Resort in Quarryville, PA. The kids were beside themselves with excitement and we all had a really good time. Not only did we get to hang with our good bear friends Yogi and Boo Boo, we were also joined by some friends of ours who booked a visit at the same time as us. It was even more fun to have some other people to hang out with. We mostly stayed at the campground for the entire three days, minus a few hours for a grocery store run (and a hot pizza!) There are many activities at the park from arts and crafts to a pretty neat-o water park complete with slides and a huge water playground.

Now, my wife enjoys the great outdoors as much as the next person...but she needs her NOT PUBLIC restroom and some air conditioning. So, instead of completely roughing it, Yogi put us up in one of Jellystone's finer cabins:


This was our home for the week. In addition to our own bathroom w/shower and the nice cold air conditioning, we also had a kitchenette (which we hardly used,) a TV (which we only used to watch Yogi cartoons before bedtime,) and a few other comforts of home. We honestly didn't spend too much time inside, but it was nice to beat the heat every so often and also not have to walk the kids down to the bath houses to use the potty at three in the morning.

The kids took this opportunity to switch up their normal bunk positions from home and Tanner took the top bunk, while Elias slept on the ground level.

There's lots of cool things to do around the park. There's a pedal kart track for the kids which was pretty impressive. Tanner tore it up doing laps around the course...

....there is also volleyball, horseshoes, a playground and an arcade.

One night we hosted dinner at our campsite. Here we are with our friends enjoying various grilled meats and pasta salad.

We went on a wonderful nature walk through some paths that travel through the woods...

...the paths lead to a fishing hole in a secluded area. Jellystone really is as beautiful as it looks in all those cartoons.

One of the coolest attractions at the campground is their Jumping Pillow...

...it's basically a huge moon bounce without the walls. The best part is there are no age, height or weight restrictions. Anybody can join in the fun. It was super fun but also extremely tiring. Three minutes on this thing and grown-ups feel like they've just worked out for 45 minutes. Of course, kids can go for hours without taking a breath! I snapped this picture from across the road to illustrate how enormous this thing is...

Yogi and his crew have a lot of activities planned throughout the day. We played Candy Bar Bingo with jackpots of up to 52 candy bars. We didn't win! We also attended an ice cream social and a pool party. They had arts and crafts in the morning. The one day they were coloring Yogi Bear t-shirts with fabric markers. It looked really cool and I wanted the kids to do it but they were so excited about going to the water park I knew coloring a t-shirt wasn't going to hold their interested against having gallons of water dumped on them.

Another activity we attended was Sidewalk Chalk at the Basketball Court. I knew Tanner would really get into and he did drawing a whole city of buildings...and people with guns!?

Elias also got into the act with a portrait of our host...

The night we went over to our friend's site for dinner they treated us to some crazy good Grilled Cheese Pizza Sandwiches which were out of this world good!

Here's one more shot of us all playing cards one night...

South Family Camping Trip #1 was a success. The kids are already asking when we can go back. I'm hoping to take the boys tent camping sometime in the next month!