Shenandoah National Park // The Great Outdoors

We went camping at Shenandoah National Park with good friends about a month ago. We hiked. We froze.  We ate delicious food. We celebrated a birthday.We also saw a mama black bear and her two cubs the first evening (very) near our campsite.  Yikes.We roasted marshmallows and enjoyed the spectacular view (that really can't be captured via camera). We worked on Junior Ranger badges & ended up buying badges from the gift shop instead, since the kids were a year too young to earn them. We hiked some more.  We oohed and ahhed over waterfalls. We brought our bikes but didn't ride them. I was thrilled that my hurt/healing leg cooperated on the hikes--man, was it sore for the next week.I highly recommend camping there, with the caveat that it may be 10 degrees cooler than predicted (and very windy). The first night I had my 3 year old sleep with me in my one person sleeping bag, which is about as relaxing as it sounds. As a result of the freezing weather, we now have a full set of camping hats and gloves.  The good news about freezing--we were too worried about being cold to worry about the nearby bear.  We camped a lot in May, and I'm thinking we might wait out the humid summer months before we camp again.