camping

I sent that meme to my friend Amanda because she loves summer as much as I do.  And it meant perfect camping weather. We reserved two camp sites back during the summer and last weekend was our camping weekend. We went to First Landing State Park because we figured it was close enough if it was too cold that we could just drive home and leave all our stuff and then come back. We might be slightly scared from our 30 degree camping experience last year! ha!

  It was our first 2 night camping trip with the kids. I reminded Brent how we used to take college students in Colorado for 3 night backpacking trips and now we have a huge car loaded up with stuff.  Our fridge was leaking right before we left so I had forgotten in the midst of cleaning it up to bring brent a pillow and a blanket. So it was good that we were so close for him to go home Saturday morning and check the fridge and grab anything we had forgotten.

The weather was absolutely perfect.  Cool nights, but not too cold.   Warm days - warm enough that the kids went swimming in the water. We are getting more organized with camping.  We now have a big Tupperware bin in the attic with all our camping gear. Each time we realize what we need and don't need.  But the kids love it. And we all actually slept the second night - probably because we didn't sleep well the first night! The sunrises each morning were worth waking up and walking out to the beach.

We swim at this beach all summer so the kids were thrilled at all the tide pools that some storms had formed. We found some tropical fish and I think a sea slug? Still figuring out what that animal was. The tide pools were there the first day but the second day when we went out to the beach they were all dried up.

The kids loved our little hatchet we had gotten for Christmas.

Colin slept in the first sunrise but I talked him into coming the second day.  It wasn't as good as the first days sunrise.  And as he reminded me before  - he didn't miss the first sunrise because I showed him pictures.

A few minutes after this picture they were all soaking wet so we went back to the campsite and got their bathing suits on, packed lunches and spent the rest of the afternoon on the beach.  It doesn't get much better in October.

There was a dead pelican on the beach. It was cool seeing it up close.

Before we left we went around and marked on a map all the campsites that we could come back to. We had reserved two together but they were separated by trees. So we walked around to find a few options for our next camping adventure.  But that will have to wait until spring because we refuse to camp now when the temperatures are below 50.  Its still hard to believe that we camped in 30 degree weather last year.

And we picked the perfect weekend because fall weather has officially arrived and we've even turned the heat on in our house.  I think the reason we love camping so much is its nice to unplug from everything and just be outside. And having friends go with us makes it a lot more fun.