One of my good friends sent out an email, probably in about February, inviting us to join in for a camping weekend in June to celebrate her 30th birthday. I have been
dying to go camping for several years now, but Josh's answer has always been, "Maybe when everyone is out of diapers." And although Rachel is still technically in diapers at night, we agreed it was close enough.
So we had been planning this camping trip for several months, but the week leading up to it, it was calling for rain for the whole weekend except the first night. We couldn't cancel because we had already paid back in February, so we forged ahead, despite only have a tent to sleep in. When we arrived, my friend informed us that they had changed the forecast, and it wasn't supposed to rain until Saturday night! Hooray! After six hours of driving, we arrived at about 7:00 and set up camp. We also still needed to make dinner, so we were slightly grumpy about all that, but made the best of it. The girls helped assemble the tent poles and then played in the leaf litter that was all around our site while we finished everything up. The girls didn't end up getting to bed until 10:45 on Friday night. Josh and I tried to wander over to our friends' site across the way, but they were having trouble getting their toddler to sleep and couldn't hang out. So Josh and I just sat at our site, had some drinks, and he played guitar while I listened. :)
Saturday morning the girls woke up bright and early with the sun. I think it was around... 6:45? Josh and I hadn't slept very well since we were all sleeping together on a full sized blow up mattress, and we weren't used to sleeping with the girls. Josh also said that as he was falling asleep, he heard a sizable animal snuffling and snorting around outside our tent, and had convinced himself it was a bear. So he had trouble sleeping after that, haha. We got up and started a fire to cook breakfast. I had made
these breakfast burritos ahead of time and we heated them in the coals. I had made some mods to the recipe (including using GF corn tortillas, which did not end up holding together well), but they were all right. We headed out in search of coffee and then around 10:00 made it to the dunes beach and did the short hiking trail there. The girls were tired and a bit whiny, but once we finished the hike and they were allowed to climb the huge dune and check out the beach they enjoyed themselves. It
was pretty cool.
The weather wasn't the warmest, but we were just happy it wasn't raining. We had our picnic lunch in the car and headed over to the sandbanks beach because it was the icon of the park and I wanted to see it! The girls enjoyed playing around in the sand and the water for about an hour, and then we headed back to the camp site. Rachel had a nap in the tent and Laura, Josh, and I made some smores (with apples instead of graham crackers) and the rest of our hotdogs on the fire. It was really nice. <3
Around four we tried to wake Rachel up, as that was the scheduled start time of our friends birthday get-together. Poor Rache was so tired, we couldn't wake her! And when we did, we out her in the car, and she fell back asleep! It started raining around then, and we spent the entirety of the gathering under the pavillion shelter. It was a nice time, still, and we grilled up some steak and foil packets of veggies I had pre-prepared at home for dinner. Rachel eventually ventured out under the run off of the roof and had a "shower" in her clothes. When we came back to the site, around 7:00, it had been raining heavily and steadily for three hours. Though we had rigged a tarp over our tent, and had tried to find the highest spot to pitch it, we still found water in the tent. We had to decide then if it would be worth trying to sleep the night in a leaky tent. But since it was supposed to rain alllll night, and still on Sunday, we decided there wasn't much worth sticking around for. We had planned to go to Josh's parents on Sunday anyway, so we tore down the tent and headed there 12 hours early to sleep in dry beds. The girls wanted to go see Grandma and Grandpa, and there wasn't really anything to gain from sleeping in the rain for the night. Josh felt kind of like we were wussing out, but ended up agreeing it was the right decision.
Sleeping in a dry bed, and having the grandparents get up with the kids on Sunday morning was glorious. We even went out for breakfast just the two of us, to a restaurant we used to go to whenever I would visit him in the summers when we were dating. We spent the day laying low, and went to the small local theatre for a matinee of Jurassic World, which we had been wanting to see for a while. It was the perfect ending to a great weekend away. I was so happy, mostly, that Josh enjoyed himself camping and that he is excited to do it again.
