Land Of Make Believe and Pirate's Cove.

This summer one of the trips my kids and husband really wanted to do is to the Land Of Make Believe and Pirate's Cove.  It is a water park and rides rolled into one package.  Both aren't enormously large, and can easily be explored by youngsters in one day without being exhausted or missing out. It is such a nice place to visit on a hot summer day.  We enjoyed everything with the water: the pool, the lazy river, every single slide about ten times each.  It was a glorious summer day.  After all the water activities we got dressed and went on a few rides.  They are geared more toward younger crowd, so my six year old enjoyed those tremendously. 

The park is on a pricy side, for four people it's about a $100.00 to get in.  Also, keep in mind that no outside food is allowed, and that on the pool side, you can't really carry anything and have to wear swimming suits.  We come light.  Just wearing shorts and swimsuits, not carrying anything but plastic bottles of water and camera.  The lunch stays in the car and we eat it later in the parking lot. 
It is a great place to visit with kids in the summertime.  We are definately going back there again!

They have a great website with prices, hours, directions and much more: http://lomb.com/

Rafting on Delaware Water Gap

A new note on this trip:
This summer (2013) we made it rafting again.  Same place, except this time we had three kids with us.  We took the 4 mile trip and it was very manageable with younger kiddies.  Also we rented a tube to tie to our raft, which made it so much more fun!!! You do need to make sure that the water is safe for a tube.  We called in a week before, and were told that the waters are too cold and choppy to use a tube due to some rains, so we had to wait a bit to go.  The following week we called and were good to go.  The tube definitely made it more fun for the older kids, and the braver younger kids.  I also managed to accidentally drown my old camera in the river, so no pictures from this trip.  It was a ton of fun. 

Oh, and on the same note, we went to the restaurant that we enjoyed the year before that was just down the road from the rafting place.  The ownership changed, and so did the food.  Not as good as I remember.
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A few times a year in the summer time we like to get a cooler full of sandwiches and drinks, throw on our swimming suits and go rafting.  There are many good places along the Delaware Water Gap to rent a raft from.  There is one in French Town that actually serves lunch.  There are many up north, around Sparta.  They all have different deals, depending on what you are looking for.  Some are great for large groups, some have restrictions on kid ages (usually 4 years old is as young as you can take a child on a raft safely).  We go with just the kids and us, so the place where a kid is free with a paid adult is the kind of place for us.

We usually use this one :
http://www.indianheadcanoes.com/

Up to four kids under 12 go free with two paying adults, which really works for us. This time we took the 7 mile trip, the river on that stretch was way too calm. The 9 mile trip takes just as much time, which means more rapids, more fun. With two smallish kids the 4 mile trip would've been enough.  We stopped on the bank to enjoy our lunch, splash and swim.  My older son enjoyed swimming alongside the raft during the calmer water.  We met a few cool fishermen that educated us about Shad.  Overall, the kids and us were really tired at the end, but it was a fun experience!

 

 

Strawberry Picking and Hacklebarney State Park

When we went to pick strawberries for the very first time in our lives I randomly picked a farm from NJ list of farms. Just pointed a finger to a place on a page. It turned out to be Donaldson Farms in Hackettstown, NJ, http://www.donaldsonfarms.net/.

Luckily for us, the place was amazingly beautiful, with rows and rows of strawberries. The store inside was nice also. There were a few goats in the shed and a 'pump it yourself' underground well. My kids ran ahead when they saw the animals, and by the time my hubby and I walked slowly over to them, the little one was having a deep and meaningful conversation with one of the goats. :) The strawberries were delicious as well.

After the farm we went to find a good place to sit down and have a picnic. We drove around for a bit, enjoyed some of the sights in the area. Wound up landing in Hacklebarney State Park, http://www.stateparks.com/hacklebarney.html. After the picnic we decided to take a little hike. In Hacklebarney there are a few decent sized rivers creating multiple waterfalls on their way down. My kids really loved skipping across the waterfalls on the giant boulders. Luckily we came home with all our faces intact.

The delicious strawberries we picked:

Hacklebarney State Park: