Another one of those campground reservations I made so many months ago rolled around at the end of June and again, we carpe’d the diem, loaded up the car, and made it happen. Coho, here we come!
Juliette is now legitimately super-helpful when it comes to setting up camp.
Isaac…not so much. But he sure tries.
I eventually asked Isaac to “help” by lining up all his cars on the picnic table. THAT, he could most definitely do.
Tent up, sleeping bags unrolled, hammock strung, juice boxes unearthed from the bottom of the cooler…cheers!
We spent the evening getting the lay of the land, traipsing through the campground in search of the closest water spigot and the best lake access.
Found the lake! Too cold for swimming, but perfect for rock-throwing.
S’mores…
And the after-party. I need to seriously rethink pumping the kids full of marshmallows before bedtime.
But there was an awful lot of pre-sleep laughter, so I rolled with it.
We slept in a bit on Saturday and emerged from our tent to find sunshine and salmonberries. Worth getting up for.
That morning was the stuff of camp dreams. We lingered over our coffee and hot chocolate. We snacked on bacon and croissants and got a little fire going and I scooted my camp chair extra-close to Shane’s while Juliette read in the hammock and Isaac scrambled over tree stumps. And that morning light streaming through the evergreens…
We took our time getting to the breakfast dishes, but eventually cleaned up and then headed out for a short stroll down a nearby trail.
This “hike” clocked in at just under a mile, which was the right distance for Isaac. We were only a couple of minutes from camp when he tired to the point of wanting to hitch a ride on sister’s back.
Lunchtime lounging…
And then what I thought would be a short stint in the tent for naptime. It started sprinkling just as Isaac fell asleep, which I figured was the perfect window for the sunshine to take a quick detour, but then it kept raining, and kept raining, And so we hunkered. Cozied up. Waited it out. Isaac did a lot of tent gymnastics and then resorted to tormenting his sister. I brought chips and canned wine and juice boxes into the tent and we happy-houred in there, then ate our hot dogs in the trunk of the car, the tail gate serving as a makeshift canopy.
Finally I decided rain be damned, we needed to stretch our legs, so we pulled up our hoods and walked over to the lake, searching for blue skies along the way.
We didn’t find any.
There was an easing-up of raindrops around 7pm and Juliette and I bee-lined to the boat launch to inflate our paddleboard and get out on the water. The rain stopped completely as we climbed on the board and the lake was glass. So still, so pristine. Juliette did most the paddling while I sat back and soaked it all in. This was worth waiting out the weather.
Sunday! I do love rolling over in the morning to the sight of these two.
These next couple of photos make my laugh – Isaac so clearly wakes up with MUCH more energy than the rest of us.
Everything was still pretty damp that morning and I couldn’t get a real fire going, so we decided to go ahead and pack it in once we’d polished off our muffins. We’d scratched our camping itch.
When I say “we” packed it in, Shane actually did the packing while I took the kids for a paddle. He’s the best.
Shane met us down at the water with a loaded-up car. We deflated our board, tossed it in the rooftop carrier, and hit the road. Rain be damned, we rocked Coho.
