May 1, 2025 - May 17, 2025 -- Firefly Hills Campground, KY
Pies 872-922
Written By: Wendy
We continued our journey west until we arrived in Beattyville, KY, which is kind of in the middle of nowhere but a surprisingly gorgeous piece of Kentucky and Appalachia. We would host our event, Savor Spring, at Firefly Hills campground, which was created and owned by some a fellow fulltime travel family. They were still working on getting the campground up and running, and we were thrilled that we could help them with the getting the word out a bit. When we arrived, we were immediately greeted by the owners and some friends that we would be coming to the event as well that had already arrived. We were given a tour of the property, and I immediately fell in love with the place. The owners were incredibly intentional with the play spaces and community gathering places they had created to give their guest the ultimate welcoming and nature filled experience. My kids squealed with delight when they saw the tree stumps lined up for kids to walk on that lead to a giant jumpy web in the middle of the trees deep in the forest. We continued on our tour, and I was transported into a whimsical fairyland at their mud kitchen that was stationed along a creek and in the shade of the large leafy trees with the sun speckling in to create a magical atmosphere. There were miles of mowed hiking trails, a writing desk tucked in the woods, ponds for fishing, a central campfire gathering location, chickens for the kids to help with, and wildflowers sprinkled throughout the green meadows surrounding the campsites. It felt like heaven, and I was instantly so happy that we chose this location for our event. We had a few days before the event started to finish getting everything ready and boy did we work our butts off for those few days.
Finally it was the big day, and the official start of our event. We had 10 families signed up, and we knew all but two families, so we were delighted to see friends again and greeted them all with big hugs. Our welcome went smoothly, and everyone seemed to enjoy playing our silly icebreaker games to get to know each other a bit better. Unfortunately our fire that night was rained out, but Scott and I were grateful for a quiet evening and for time to debrief. We were both energized with the start, but we knew we needed to pace ourselves and get sleep while we could.
Over the course of the week, Scott and I proved many things to ourselves and had some major takeaways. It was an action packed week with little time for either of us to sit down or hardly even take a breath, but here is a list of what we learned:
- We work extremely well together when we have a clear common goal with laid out responsibilities between the two of us. We were like a well oiled machine and several people made comments that they were surprised that this was only our second event.
- We love building community and brining people together. It energizes both of us and warms our hearts to see others making connections that we helped to facilitate.
- We really loved incorporating more of the local community with this event. We did a service project one afternoon where we cleaned up a downtown event area that had been damaged from the spring floods. We also invited a local to come teach a cooking class one evening. We made local dishes of meat and potato foil packets, cornbread, "kill'd" salad (lettuce covered in bacon grease...ummm YUM!), and fruit cobbler. I loved learning from her, and everyone seemed to appreciated the connection to the local area and food.
- Our kids thrived off the freedom they were given that week. The increase in freedom was partially from how incredibly busy Scott and I were and partially from the small and safe campground where I could see or at least hear my kids from just about anywhere in the campground. I also knew every person there and that they all had an eye for my kids.
- It is an amazing feeling to parent in a community. One major thing that RV life and especially life at events has taught me is that parenting with other parents and in a community is incredibly powerful and so. much. easier. There are aspects of RV life that are so isolating, but the times when we are with others, it's amazing to have the feeling of raising kids together. I want to remember this feeling and continually strive to re-create it, even if we go back to "normal" life.
- We bit off more than we could chew. Scott and I literally ran ourselves into ground over the course of the week. It was in a good way, but we determined that we could not continue to lead events this way, so next time we will enlist more help or try to not plan quite so much. Or both.
- We want to keep doing this. It was an exhausting week, but one of my most fulfilling. Scott and I were both on a high all week and felt that this was our purpose. We'll see where the future takes us with this, but we know we want to continue doing something similar in some way.
That was what we learned, but the week was also filled with many other highlights. One of my favorite parts of the week was having story time and crafts with the kids every morning. We had mostly younger kids in our group, so each morning I read a book and lead a few corresponding crafts. The former teacher in me reveled in the feeling of having 10-15 sets of little eyes upon me while I captivated their attention. I was even complimented by one of the dads one morning at my ability to rein them all in.
Another highlight was the morning that we lead a session on how to create your family values and family mission statement. Scott took charge with this, and he expertly guided families on how to think about their values and family mission while they snipped pictures out of magazines that had meaning to them and created a family vision board. I could see the fire in Scott and knew that this would not be the last time he lead a session like this.
We had dads night out and moms night out, which were extremely fun and let everyone have a night of freedom and let loose for a change. The moms laughed the night away, and everyone drank more than their share, which wasn't hard to do with the stiff and cheap drinks served at the local bar we went to.
Of course, our main highlight was our pizza day. Scott lead a dough making class in the morning. Just like our Halloween event, it warmed my heart to see all the families working together to make their own dough and involving their kids of all ages. It truly brought everyone together. That evening, everyone tried their hand at throwing dough and shaping their own pizzas and then firing them up in the oven. There were some definite mishaps, but a lot of successful delicious pizzas were made, and we certainly spread culinary kindness that day.
Mother's Day was on the last day of our event, so we ended it with a delicious Mother's Day brunch made by all the dad and kids while the moms did yoga. The kids each presented their moms with homemade wooden flowers and hand drawn breakfast menus and then served them their food. We had some 2 year olds that had abstract menu options, but all the moms were touched, including myself. The afternoon was filled with family field games that had everyone laughing and ended in a giant water balloon fight among everyone.
As our event came to a close, Scott and I were absolutely exhausted but extremely proud of what we had pulled off. Luckily we still had another 5 days at the campground to recover. After a few days of sleep and lots of quiet time, we emerged refreshed and ready to socialize again. Most of the families were still there, and we decided to do a big group hike to Creation Falls. It was planned last minute, but we had 5 families hike together and then splash in the shallow water at the base of the small but beautiful waterfall oasis. Afterwards we decided to all head to dinner together at RedPoint Barbeque and met up with another family for a total of 6 families on a Thursday. Does that ever happen in "real" life to gather 6 families together for a last minute hike and dinner on a Thursday? No, never. I fully realized that and was astounded by that realization.
We said our good byes the next day, and I was extremely sad to be leaving and that our long anticipated event was now over. Most of our friends there would be staying east for the foreseeable future, so we weren't sure when we would see many of them again after becoming so close with them. This was heavy on my heart, but part of the chosen lifestyle. Big hugs were given, and I wiped away a few tears as we drove down the narrow windy road for one last time that lead us out of the New River Gorge area.