Camping at Pawtuckaway

What a great Columbus Day weekend! Hank and I met Joanne and Mark at Pawtuckaway State Park in Nottingham, NH for a long weekend of camping. Joanne and Mark set their red "fab t@b" up on site #65 and we set up our orange tab right next door on #66. It was warm and sunny all weekend and the foliage was at peak. The park is beautiful and all of the sites are tucked in the pines on the shores of Lake Pawtuckaway.
When we arrived on Thursday afternoon, Mark and Joanne were already set up and Joanne had left a surprise on our site...our picnic table was set with a tablecloth, flowers and an anniversary card! We were all married 20 years ago...Joanne and Mark on August 27th and Hank and I on October 8th.
Joanne and Mark cooked on Friday night and
there was so much food! On Saturday night, Hank made a one-pot "camp supper" in the dutch oven and Mark liked it so much that Joanne is going to try her hand at dutch oven cooking too.
Last night, Joanne and I paddled her inflatable boat around the lake at dusk (actually, she paddled, I sat)...it was beautiful...at least until we got tangled in the line of a nearby fly fisherman in a canoe! All along the banks we could see campfires blazing as we watched night fall. It was dark when we got back to the campsite but Mark and Hank were watching football so we guessed they weren't too worried about us!
Joanne and Mark gave us another gift too- orange LL Bean baseball caps with LIGHTS in the visor (they have red ones!). These are at the top of my "what will they think of next" list...the light is so bright you can walk around at night without a flashlight and read by the campfire. Thought you would enjoy this photo of Hank and I modeling our new camping hats in front of the t@b.
In spite of the fact that the Patriots lost, it was a great weekend and a good chance to reconnect with Joanne and Mark. This will be our last camping trip of 2008 but we're already looking forward to returning to Pawtuckaway next year.