A weekend escape!

My hubby and I celebrated our 17th wedding anniversary this weekend. At the last minute we decided to get out of town! (Our adult kids have been making us worry and stress so this was a much needed break!)

We drove to my in-laws on Wednesday and spent the night (which put us closer to our destination) and on Thursday we got up and drove to Bennet Springs State Park where we canoed and camped. Weather was gorgeous and the river was perfect! What a nice, peaceful day. I highly recommend this float to anyone going to Missouri! I have such a good husband too. I should call him Mr. Friendly as he never meets a stranger. He tries so hard to have a conversation with everyone he meets. Some people are willing and others are reclusive but it sure is cute to watch. After all these years I know it's coming and I just sit back and and listen.

We decided after camping Thursday night that maybe we could sell our story to I Survived. Okay, maybe that is exaggerating a bit, but it was a horrible night. We were so uncomfortable, and it was too noisy to sleep. We were to tall for our tent and the ground was so HARD even though I brought a ton of blankets to make a bed....Kudo's to Mr. Friendly for bringing the fan though! At least we were not HOT! I decided then that I'm not a tent girl!

We got up Friday and drove to Branson where I said, "Let's give camping one more try. It is so much cheaper than a hotel." I don't know what came over me...but we went to Indian Point State Park off of Table Rock Lake and bought a camp site for one night.
Across America this weekend was garage sale weekend. There were 100's of sales all along our trip. We didn't stop at any (unlike us) but decided to go to one that was on the road to our campsite. We were heading for Walmart to get a blow up water mattress to use as a cushion for the tent anyway, so we followed the signs. Low & behold they had an awesome tent for sale that we got for $25!!! Steal! And they also had 2 blow up mattresses for a buck a piece! Score.

God wants us to camp!

We had the BEST time. Really. Camping there was beautiful, peaceful and just overall fun. We set up our new tent- LOVE IT by the way, we blew up the air mattresses and we were able to hang the fan from this tent's ceiling so that created an awesome cooling effect!

The swimming site was a short walk away so we swam at dusk. I'm a tent girl now!!!

We got up Saturday morning and went scuba diving.

Only our 2nd time on our own since our certification last October. Here is a photo of handsome Mr. Friendly. :)

We did great! We dove for 2 hours & we went as deep as 52'. We were only going to try to go to 60' but it was so darn cold! I think I could of done it eventually but it took so long to get used to the water temperature change and visibility was not the best. They had some dive classes there that day and I think they had the bottom stirred up pretty good. You would not believe how HOT the top water feels after being down 20-50 feet! It was so warm it was uncomfortable to surface! Jim got me a really nice underwater camera for my birthday in April but I have not been happy with the quality of it's photos. Everything is looking over exposed and that is with it on automatic. Still neat to get underwater photos even if they are not perfect! The little fish (had to be 50 or more) were trying to eat our hands. Very cool. It didn't hurt but they were swarming us like bees and biting our fingers. Too fun!

Me playing around. I look like a giant frog! Yikes!