Harvest Moon Camping

I said many times and I will keep saying it: I love the moon and feel alive, invigorated and empowered every time there is a full moon. Maybe there is actually power in the full moon or maybe I just am excited about seeing something so beautiful, I may never know. What I do know is that I  will never stop looking at the moon in all it's magical beauty.

I did not actually take this photo of the moon but this is what it looked like on Sept. 6, 2017 as it was rising and peeking through the dark gray/blue storm clouds. As it rose it looked whiter, brighter and smaller.

Fun moon facts:

The full moon will always look bigger when it’s near the horizon, but it’s not actually bigger. It’s totally an optical illusion. You can test this by just holding an penny at arm’s length. The penny will exactly cover the moon when it’s by the horizon and it’ll do the same when you hold it up to the sky when the moon is higher up but appears smaller.
Also the moon and the sun will look redder when they're by the horizon. The reason for this is because we're seeing them through the maximum thickness of atmosphere, which absorbs blue light and transmits red.

I decided to take my 4 younger kids camping at Maumee Bay State park this year to celebrate the full harvest moon and our journey into the fall season.

Our campsite was gorgeous, a spectacular view a yellows, whites, and deep golden wildflowers along the large pond. I had been watching the weather and it looked like we might get a few hours of rain at check in time when we were supposed to set up our tents. So we left very early and arrived by 11pm to set up our tents before the rain.

Canary stole my phone and took a bunch of photos, most of them were of grass and and the tires on the van but this one was a great action photo of me setting up our tent.

The weather was great, we spent the day exploring and going on bike rides along the shore. I did not take many pictures but I was fully in the moment feeling the wind on my face and the sun on my skin. Owl came up with a great game that we played while riding, it was called "What to you see that is beautiful." We took turns looking around us as we cycled along naming one item at a time that we thought was beautiful. Such a great game!

We went back to our campsite to cook dinner and to make moon water which we infused with small shards of black tourmaline. We also made some glow in the dark bracelets with glow in the dark beads.

Some of our tiny moon water charms hanging in a tree waiting for the moon.

Getting ready to head to the beach for our lantern walk after reading a page in the book Full Moon Lore we love this book so much, we brought our library copy but I need to add this to my amazon shopping list ASAP.

Everyone loved the cute little mice nibbling on corn!

We watched the moon rise, wrote messages in the sand, listened to the soft lake waves, and walked with our lanterns while listening to some beautiful lantern songs found on youtube.

It was such a calm peaceful walk.

Back at camp with our lanterns glowing into the night.

Gorgeous moon photo I caught on one of our many walks to the bathroom.

Around 11:30 Robin and I sat out by the fire after everyone else was asleep just chatting about books and life. It was a nice moment, I think we should go camping together one night just the 2 of us!

Just as the moon moved out of a 100% full one of my children woke up vomiting, which brought our camp out to an abrupt end. I built a fresh fire for the children to sit around and by the light of the moon and our warm fire we torn down out tents and packed up the van with the help of Papabird who rode out on that beautiful  September night. 

We had many activities planned for the next day but I assured the children that we would stop back next week and spend the day there.

Despite the fact our camp out ended in a vomit covered mess I would do it all over again because up until that point we had a blast. 

We picked up these great books from the lodge gift shop that I cannot wait to use for our studies.