Sprinkled with granola: Florida Caverns State Park

We made a last minute plan to head to Marianna, Florida to explore Florida Caverns State Park. I found a great picture on Pinterest and I sent it to my husband (he was still TDY at the time, due to come home at the end of that week), and he said "lets go this weekend!!!". It was only a quick 2 hours from our house. I booked the campground on Wednesday afternoon. $29 for one night with all the hookups. The ONE fatal mistake we made was believing this picture we saw on Pinterest was actually going to be at the State Park. I should have researched that more. There was a swimming hole at the park but it wasn't as it was described. Thankfully part way through our day a fellow dance mom that grew up in Marianna filled us in on an actual "Blue Springs" that was just 20 minutes away from the Caverns. We planned to make that trip the next day.

It is important to us that BOTH our kids know how to hook up a trailer safely and why things are the way they are. That way if one parent is able to go on the trip we have them to help us.

Kennedie learning how to hook up the lights, and safety chains.

It was Mason's first camping trip. It wasn't going to be too far of a drive for him to be in the back of the truck and it was overcast when we left GA at 730 Saturday morning.

Pulling the trailer out of it's car port.

2 hours later we arrived.

We didn't realize you couldn't check into your camping spot until 3 pm (and we got there 9 FL time), so we explored the area for about 30 minutes. All the food I packed required cooking, so we headed to Walmart real quick to grab dad a steak and the rest of us hot dogs, and charcoal. Then headed back to this area because they had shaded picnic tables and a grill area.

Cale wanted to see how cold it was.

I was originally worried that this wasn't a swimmable spot because at 10 am no one was swimming in it yet. Turns out no one was there yet.

Looking from a distance you can't tell it's blue, it was hard even for me to photograph it to show how blue it was when you got close to it.

Where we parked the truck/camper so we could eat lunch.

Boys getting the grill all ready and clean for cooking.

Cale was REALLY excited to swim he finally got dad to finish cooking and eating.

Two happy boys!!!

Kennedie couldn't get in the water so we hung out at the picnic tables with the dog. We thankfully have a well behaved dog that doesn't bark at every little thing. Actually he doesn't bark at all!!

Pull into our site and the sewer drain was REALLY far from the actual outlet on the camper. This didn't pose a problem for being there one night, but it might have been an issue had we needed to stay more days. Would have required us to hook up, pull forward and dump and move it back and plug everything back in.

We had camp site #20. It was a great spot!

You actually have to drive into the park for a ways before you hit the blue hole and the camp ground. I'd say about 10 minutes before you hit those two spots.

He's just the laziest dog ever! Park rules said he had to be on a 6 foot hand held leash at all times (I didn't read that when we first decided to bring him), we had a 25 foot lead for him. I told the lady when she checked us in. She said as long as his lead doesn't let him go into the road he should be fine. We were like 2 spots away from the campground host and they never came over to say anything. I don't know if it's because he is such a well behaved dog and didn't cause any problems or they just didn't really care.

Cale loves to play board games. He loves it ESPECIALLY when we are camping. I found this great felt checker board set at Target recently for $3. Perfect for the trailer because it folds into a pouch about the size of a school pencil pouch!

Florida has had a lot of rain recently so a lot of the fire wood (even though it's been in a shed locked up) so it was really damp. It took us FOREVER to get this fire going. Thankfully we had an extra fire starter in the camper and that helped once we got all the moisture out the wood.

This boy loves his BB gun. It's not camping until Cale has been shooting that BB gun.

Finished checkers and he decided he wanted to play Battleship.

We have had our camper for about a year and a half now. We had two propane bottles on it, only use the propane for hot water and cooking. Apparently we didn't think to check the bottles in a while thinking "we haven't used a lot of propane, no way are we going to be out soon!" yup - we were out when we tried to turn on the gas stove! Thankfully I keep an electric skillet in the camper for JUST these emergencies! This is after washing all the dishes from dinner and dessert.

Trying to keep Mason's food away from the bugs!

The camper all lit up!

Now onto connect four! This was the last game we played Saturday night!

We were told to go down to the bathhouse around 8pm and we could hopefully see the bats come out of the bat house. We waited for about 15 minutes but they were being stubborn.

As you can see I put his bed in the bathroom so no one would trip on him in the middle of the night. Nope he wanted to be in the middle of the floor all night.

BREAKFAST TIME!

Cale convinced dad to have a bey blade battle with him. You can tell he TOTALLY misses his daddy when he is gone.

Sunday morning we drove to the visitors center/gift shop to purchase our cave tour tickets. You can't buy these ahead of time. First come first serve. If you wanted to go later in the afternoon you should go first thing in the morning to purchase. We got there at 845am when they opened and went on the 9am tour.