My adventure at the range!

It's Claire again! This time I'm going to tell you about the fun I had at a shooting range a few years back.

My parents like doing target practice and all that, but I'm more an archery girl (what I wouldn't give for a bow of my own!), so I was allowed to wander around in the awesome forest right next door.

I always have to do a "ta-da!" pose whenever I get somewhere new. Even though I have siblings, I haven't lived with them since I was a toddler, so I don't constantly have other kids picking on me for being silly. So I can be as silly as I want.

Here's the entrance to the forest. I guess there's someone's little cabin there if you go far enough. At least, that's what Mama told me. Maybe she just didn't want me going too far?

Izumi came with me to take pictures. She didn't want to be in front of the camera this time, but she let me have all the ones with me in them!

We found a deer print! Izumi is a city girl, so she wasn't then used to seeing signs of wild animals everywhere. 

Look at this great creek! It was way too cold to go wading in it, but I'd love to come back during the summer.

Could you imagine Anne's horror if she saw me sitting here? It looks really muddy, but it was mostly straw. I wonder where it came from?

I soooo wanted to climb across this tree branch. Izumi told me that it would probably break under my weight and that if I fell, I was on my own. 

So we found this thicker, safer log to climb on. I mostly just wanted to practice my balance, anyway.

I think Izumi was on a low branch to get this picture.

My best friend can take better portraits than some professionals!

This is kind of a gross one. We found the disembodied hand of some wild animal here. Both of us shrieked when we saw it, but then, of course, we needed proof for future generations.

Look at these rocks by the creek. Don't they look like stone books? Evangeline would have loved them.

This is me pouting about the freezing water. 

But I cheered up significantly when we saw some little fish! Or maybe tadpoles. I don't know.

Come on, what's a Claire Adventure without a little tree climbing?

One day I'll get Izumi to try climbing more than a foot off the ground. One day.

I hope I can come back here soon! It's been way too long. Maybe when the endless snow lets up.

My vacation to Monongahela National Forest!

Hey, everyone! This is my first post on this blog! Actually, it's the first post of any kind on the blog. It's kind of an honor.

Anyway, my name is Claire Fleming, and I'm going to tell you about the time I spent a few weeks of beautiful summer in the even more beautiful Monongahela National Forest in West Virginia. 

Before we get started, you must understand that "Monongahela" is pronounced "mah-NON-gah-HAY-la", not "mon-non-GAY-lee-ah". If you say it the second way, any proper West Virginian will boot you from the state. I know this because my mom and little brother live there, and I've been lectured many times.

So anyway, in 2012 I got to go on vacation here with my dad and step-mom! I've been a few times before, but it had been a few years.

This is me on a pit stop. The gas station we stop at in Wheeling has the greatest frappes you will ever have in your life. And there's this huge hill that's super fun to climb up and roll down until your parents make you stop.

At the Blackwater Falls campground, there's a big, golden field through the woods, right next to Pendleton Lake. I spent probably most of my time here. It made me wish I had a big dog to play with in the sea of grass. Taffy's really cool, but she's really lacking in the tug-of-war department.

This place is so big and the grass is so tall that I could totally see a deer or a black bear wandering in and not even noticing me. I'm actually kinda disappointed it didn't happen.

I spent some time just laying around, feeling the grass tickling my face while I breathed in the purest earth scents... until bugs started crawling on me. If nature has one fault, it's probably bugs.

Once you go beyond the field, there's a great playground! It was dedicated to a kid who died, which is a real bummer, but I'm glad that something good could come from something bad.

If surfing is this easy, I'd like to try it for real! See that building behind me? That's the discovery center. Or is it the nature center? I don't remember, but it's full of cool bones and diagrams and stuff. You just can't take photos inside. 

You know me, though. A forest is nothing without some prime trees for climbing.

 Fun story about this trip! I got into the car barefoot, remembered I didn't have shoes, and I asked my dad to grab my shoes for me while he went back in for his wallet. For some reason, he grabbed my ballet flats instead of my boots, and I didn't notice until we were hundreds of miles from home.

So after a few days, we ceased bumming around the campground and took a day to go out to Dolly Sods! It's a beautiful mountain with acres of flamingly bright wilderness, not to mention the rocks! You'll see what I mean. This is where we had a picnic lunch halfway up the mountain.

This is the trash can at the picnic site. It looked like a bear had tried to get into it! This was the year I finally really understood why my parents were so strict about putting food--good or bad--away for the night.

Now we're getting to the fun part! The top of the mountain is strewn with these huge chunks of stone. They're everywhere. Dad said they probably got like this when the Earth was flooded.

Some of the bigger rocks make chasms that I could totally fall into. Dad made me hold his hand when we jumped from rock to rock. Mama said some of them reminded her of the ruined city in the Chronicles of Narnia, and how they spelled out "Under Me". I didn't really remember that part. I had to ask Evangeline when I got home. She's better at remembering fantasy stuff than I am.

Look at these super cute flowers we saw everywhere! I still have no idea what they could be. Maybe some kind of mountain rhododendron? 

Jeez. If I had so much as tripped, I'd have been gone. It's really harrowing. (I told Izumi I'd find a way to use that in this post!)

It's views like this that write books.

On our last day in WV, we went for a peaceful drive around Germany Valley. It's got all these rolling hills and farms and cabins. I'd love to live here one day.

And look! Lilies! This place has everything!

That's surprisingly all the pictures I have for now! I'm sure if Miss Izumi had come with me, there would be thousands more.

I hope when we go again this year I can visit all my favorite places that we missed then!