Taking the Dogs Camping For the FIRST Time!

Guess what we're doing today? So it is time for our first camping trip of the year. Okay well technically it's time for our second camping trip of the year. The first one we went with my parents and we just had a nice chill two-day trip without a ton of activities. So technically this is our first camping trip of the year with activities. This trip took us to Traverse City, Michigan which if you guys have been around for a while, you know we've been here many times before. But we actually decided to not only hit a different campground this time around, but some different areas in Traverse City. We packed up the RV, we loaded the dogs and we headed over to the Holiday Park Campground in Traverse City, Michigan. We arrived in the early evening hours so we got all set up and then we took the dogs for a short little hike to explore the campground. This is a resort style campground and it has a lot of full hookup sites and seasonal spots available for rent. We found out that some of these people at this campground, especially around the island area on the lake, have been camping here year after year after year which I thought was kind of cool. The dogs were really excited to get their paws wet in the lake as it was a little bit warm even for evening hours when we got here. So of course as we walked around this area we let them get their paws wet which made them super happy. Then as we continued on we saw this really cute little bird that then fell into the lake and we weren't sure if he was actually a waterfowl bird or not. So we stuck around for a little bit. Jamie took the dogs and walked a little bit further and I made sure that the bird got out of the lake which he did safely and he was really cute. The name of this lake by the way is Silver Lake. So after we saved that little bird we continued on our walk headed back to the RV to get ready for bed to get rested for the next day full of adventures. One of the things I love about camping like this is sometimes we have absolutely no plans and that was pretty much how this trip went. We woke up the next day no real plan in mind. Like I said sometimes that is just the best way to go camping. After feeding the dogs their breakfast we loaded them into the Jeep and off we went. We headed to a tiny little historic town called Leland otherwise known as Historic Fish Town and this is a really cool little town on Lake Michigan with so much to see. It was super windy so we didn't take the dogs down to Lake Michigan and instead we just walked them around all these little shops. We took the dogs over the bridge that goes over the water so they could see everything. There's like a little dam on this bridge here. It is really cool to stand here and listen to the water flow down the river into the lake. This is so amazing! It's beautiful! It's amazing! Yeah what do you see? What do you see down there? And the boats in the town is really cool to see from right here. I think the dogs really enjoyed this part of the walk and of course they call it fish town for a reason and the dogs were walking down the boardwalk and you could tell they knew every single place that was making fish and working with fish because the smells of fish and smoked fish is everywhere in this little area and of course we had to get some smoked fish and some smoked fish dip to take back to the RV with us. After spending some time in fish town we headed a little bit further up the peninsula to the Leelanau State Park. We wanted to see the Grand Traverse Lighthouse and remember how earlier I said it was windy? Well it was really windy out on this point so we only hiked around the area for a little bit and then we decided we should probably head back to the campground. When we got back to the campground the dogs all chilled out on the picket line and you know a lot of you guys ask me about this and what it is and how it works. What this is, is this is a four dog picket line. It can hold up to four dogs but we of course use it for three. Each dog has like a 36 inch leash attached to this line and this keeps the dogs safe at the campground and the length of the line stops them from getting all tangled up. If you use standard tie outs they tend to get all tangled and no they do not spend a ton of time on this line. We get those comments all the time when camping like oh you just leave your dogs out there. No! As you can see from this video and other videos we do, we take tons of hikes with our dogs, tons of walks with our dogs when we're camping and the picket line is just for downtime at the campsite. When we're sitting outside of the RV and we're hanging out or making food on the fire it's a place where the dogs can be outside and enjoy time with us without getting all tangled up. You can get these from alpineoutfitters.net and you can use the code GTTSD10%-2023 which I'm going to put on the screen here as well as in the video description below and that will get you 10% off your order if you order one of these or anything from their website and for those of you wondering yes this is also where we get our dog neck lines, our sledding harnesses and our urban mushing harnesses. So after chilling outside of the RV with the dogs for a little bit we made some dinner they slept for a little bit it was time for our evening walk which of course means the LED collars which I know everybody loves. Again I will put a link to those down below as well. This campground has some really nice trails and different areas to walk around so every evening we tried to go on a little bit of a different route. Like I said there's a lot of cool places where you can walk down to the lake you can walk around that little island area there's some woods area that we found as well and there was lilacs which I was super excited about because they're my favorite flower. So we did our little walk around the campground and then we headed back to the RV when it was time to try the smoked fish and the dip that we got and as we were getting ready to do this we noticed that Kira had a little bump on her nose so we stopped everything we were doing and we kind of checked that out a little bit it was a little concerning. Within 15 minutes it went from being this little bump to this really big bump and this is why I tell you guys it is so extremely important to not only have a dog first aid kit with you but to also know where your closest emergency vets are located. Now this was not something we ended up having to take her to the vet for we are 99% sure that this was just a standard bug bite but to be safe I did call the emergency vet I explained the situation to them told them everything that was going on and they agreed that the best course of action would be to give her Benadryl and then ice the bump and see what happened they said if it kept swelling if we had any issues to go ahead and bring her in they wanted us to watch for her breathing to have any issues or anything like that so we did all of those things and by the time we were ready for bed the bump was considerably smaller I tell you it's always something it's important to have the first aid kit for your dogs and to know where your nearest vet is no matter where you are traveling this is something that I make sure we do no matter if we're camping if we're road tripping or if we're staying in hotels and this is exactly why I had Benadryl in the RV kit I had an ice pack in the freezer we were good to go so after that little bit of worry it was time to get some sleep so we could wake up the next morning and do more fun things so the next morning when we got up the first thing we did of course was to check on Kira and her bump was almost completely gone so we fed the dogs and then Memphis had to head over to her physical therapy session yes you guys don't know she had knee surgery nine months ago and yes we are still doing physical therapy with her because it's really good for her and I like to make sure that she's still progressing really well which she is it was really nice to be in Traverse City for her appointment time as normally this is a five hour round trip drive for me so like I said it was really nice that I was able to kind of just wake up and head on over there Memphis got to see Miss Paula do her cantilevers walk on the water treadmill do all of her things and once again they said she's doing absolutely amazing and of course after therapy we had to go to Chick-fil-a because it's tradition Memphis and I have been doing this ever since she started physical therapy but this time instead of her and I sharing in the car we did take everything back to the RV so she could share some with Eleanor and Kira and her dad of course as well after we enjoyed our lunch it was time once again to load up the dogs but they decided it was time to break out into song first a few weeks ago when I was in Traverse City with Memphis for therapy we found this really pretty walking trail at Boardman Lake and I wanted Jamie to come check it out so we were only about 15 minutes from it at the campground so we drove through traffic saw Han Solo encased in carbonite no joke he's right there and then we headed to the Boardman loop trail we had the idea that we were going to do this entire loop which takes you all the way around the lake but we didn't realize how far it actually was we did take the new bridge that walks you across the floodwaters which is really cool there is so much waterfall to see when walking around here the dogs enjoyed the sounds of everything and they smelled everything while we were on this walk we did walk the trail for quite a ways to a really cool overlook and then we decided it was time to turn around and head back Memphis had done a lot of exercising at physical therapy and we didn't want to overdo her for the day so we headed back to camp to make some dinner and relax outside of the RV you can see here the dogs are really good camping dogs it's really interesting to me to see that they have this really strict routine at home that they're very used to and then when we travel you would think that would be an upset to their standard routine but really they figure it out so fast I think we've done this enough with them that they kind of know the difference between home and traveling after they napped outside of the RV for a little bit we once again did our evening walk around the campground only this time we found another cool trail to follow we hiked down this for a bit and then we headed back to the RV to head to bed as we needed to get up really early the next morning and head home the next morning we got up really early as I said packed everything up and hit the road as we had a big surprise coming for the dogs and actually if you want to know what that surprise was there's going to be a link at the end of this video and down in the video description below to take you to that video some of you may have already seen it but we had to rush home to get this big surprise for the dog and that was our first well second camping adventure of the year if you would like to see more of this trip and our other trips with longer videos you can always find them on our vlog channel over at Snow Dogs Vlogs there will be a link down in the video description below as always you guys thanks so much for watching thanks for subscribing stay positive dream big and we will see you again soon goodbye pawdience!