Nothing warms the heart quite like a long walk along the beach or stargazing as the smell of fresh s’mores fills the air interrupted only by the scent of the wood burning in the campfire. A few weeks ago, I had the pleasure of enjoying these little luxuries with my family. We took a little road trip to a nice little place called Collin’s Lake. The scenery on the road to our destination was nice but nothing compared to the lake itself. The air was fresh and cool, similar to that of Tahoe but not nearly as cold. The dirt had an interesting red tint in person; I would say that it was muted sienna color. We set up our camp a little ways up from road 7 and went down there to cross the land bridge and hike along the hills across the lake. I was lucky enough to capture the moment a particular bird had its wings fully outstretched. The name of the bird slips my mind but what I distinctly remember is my sister next to me explaining how rare of a sight that was. There were three of those carnivorous birds all together right next to the land bridge. I also managed to get a clear shot of a lizard blending into a rock. Unfortunately I missed the opportunity to take a picture of the one that appeared to be doing push-ups. Nevertheless, the view was breath taking up there and I seized the moment to get a candid photo of my older sister. I also sneakily took photos of a couple who were near the water’s edge down from the land bridge. Those photos were some of my favorites because I loved the blurry foreground and clarity on the couple while they took a break from fishing to just enjoy the view. The second photo of them was also one of my favorites because although that couple was not the focus they could still be seen in the blurry background with the golden grass being the subject. It was blurry and clear in just the right spots. On the second day we went down to the beach. My little brother attempted to build a sandcastle but it was too close to the water to form the grand structure he had in mind. My little sister picked seashells along the seashore. Yes, that was a reference to the well-known tongue twister, “she sells seashells by the seashore”. My youngest brother was having the time of his life in the water. My mother doesn’t swim but she rolled up her pants and joined him anyway. We had a picnic and I stayed to watch the sunset on the beach. My sunrise photos came out blurry so I had to get the sunset at least. As I watched the sunset and took as many good photos of it as I could I thought about how I was on the other side of that lake just the day before. How do sunsets look from the opposite hill, not facing the sun? Dinner was a picnic. There was a pun there, you see the phrase “___ was a picnic” implies that something was easy or simple. We had soup for dinner. Dinner was a picnic in every sense of the word. Dessert was spectacular. We had s’mores. That was my first time eating s’mores so to put that into the first-timer’s point of view, I never imagined that I would ever enjoy any food that had marshmallows as the main ingredient. I don’t know what kind of magic or witch craft it was, but I don’t mind having s’mores for the rest of my life. Something about the crispy caramelized exterior in addition to the creamy sweet richness of the center of the marshmallow which flows out and warms the Hershey’s chocolate and melts it just enough to make it a good match for the hard and dry graham crackers that held this little sandwich of happiness together – something about this is magical. As a sat on my log enjoying my piece of heaven the kids tried to make kettle corn on the stove. I had never seen how kettle corn is made so this was new to me. It was in a sort of pan with aluminum foil in a swirl on top. The fire from the stove continued to warm it up and the foil continued to rise up into a dome. I don’t know what went wrong but something definitely went wrong because the foil caught on fire, the smell of burnt popcorn filled the air, and when the little fire was put out, all was for naught and the kettle corn would not be revived. In the morning we had breakfast, packed our bags and headed down the road to the place we call home.