Huntsville State Park

Huntsville State Park is one of my favorite places on the earth.

When I was a kid I was a part of a church group kind of like Boy Scouts and we used to go camping there. As soon as the van came to a stop at our camping spot we would bail out and start setting up tents under the tall pine trees. I remember catching fish from Lake Raven. If I think about it hard enough I can almost taste the over-seasoned greasy hamburgers we cooked over an open flame. We hiked the trails and killed water moccasins which I am sure we would have gotten kicked out of the park for. And we swam at the swim beach that is mostly unchanged some 25 to 30 years later.

Andrea and I took our first camping trip alone as a married couple with a new child to Huntsville State Park. We packed a tent, a play pen, a baby and some food in our Buick Regal and roughed it for a night. It was the first of many camping trips we would take with our kids.

The five of us in the Stunz family took some good friends from another country camping for the first time at Huntsville State Park. He was from Scotland, she was from England and they had two girls. His dad was visiting from Scotland and it was a great trip where we mostly swam and played horse shoes.

Jakeb and I went to Huntsville State Park a couple of summers ago for what would become an annual tradition of spending a couple of days alone as a dad and son. We hiked, swam, ate camp food and talked about guy stuff while the girls stayed at home.

I ran my first race longer than a marathon last year at Huntsville State Park. I ran the Sunmart 50k in a little under 6 hours.

This weekend Jakeb and I are going to Huntsville State Park to run Hog’s Hunt 25k. The plan is to make another good memory in a pretty cool place.