Tyler, Texas Campout

So I know, I win the slacker award. I tried to be an avid blogger, and obviously I failed. Well lets try again. This summer my life will slow down a bit with all my extra actvities, that maybe just maybe my blogging will be better. We will see, no promises. Here we go!

As you know, the Shaffer's just can never stay still. We love to be crazy and we take any and every opportunity to leave and explore the wild outdoors. Well we did just that and decided to attempt camping here in Texas. We have to say we were really surprised how fun it was and how it was similar to camping at home, minus the mountains of course. Texas really surprised us!

We camped at Tyler State Park in Tyler, Texas. Tyler is really pretty, lots of green hills! The park was really nice. They had a nice lake, which we went kayaking on and an awesome swim area. They have really nice hiking and mountain biking trails as well.
We lucked out because the weekend we went Tyler was putting on their annual Azalea days (I did not spell that right). What this is,is people plant these azalea flowers and one week of the year in spring they are in full bloom. You go around to all these homes and look at the pretty flowers. They also had tours of plantations, which we went on. The homes were so beautiful and huge! At each home they had these high school girls dressed in fancy old dresses, greeting all the visitors. They were called Azalea Bells. Toby had fun getting pictures with all of them!:)
During the weekend they also had a Civil War reinactment. It was pretty funny and cool!

Here are some photos from the trip;



The Civil War reinactment

Really?! Now that is funny!

They have these crazy trees, you can climb them

like you would a rope. We had too much fun swinging

on them!

Here is my monkey boy. Look how high he is!

This is the backyard of someones home. This was featured in

the Home and Garden Magazine. Aren't the flowers so

beautiful!

These are the cute Azalea Bells

This is one of the plantations, that was on our tour.