Camping

We just got back from our annual camping trip (I guess it's our annual trip since we've done it two years in a row now). We spent 3 days on Lopez Island at a really cool beach campsite. We had been looking forward to this trip pretty much since we came back last year. We had to get the same campsite and ride our bikes to town and stop at the same places along the way. This is such a cool place to camp because you are ON THE BEACH and also in the woods. So while I'm cooking, doing dishes, cleaning up and whatnot, a little boy can dig around in the sand, climb trees, and explore to his hearts content without leaving my sight. Luckily the weather pretty well cooperated and we didn't get drenched, there were even some sunbreaks.

A little tree climbing before dinner. I wasn't thrilled with this particular choice, it reminded me a bit too much of Charlie Brown's Christmas tree.

Last year we attempted to do the whole thing without our car. I had the bike trailer all packed up with a teeny tent, a can of Stearno, powdered food and two sleeping bags. But by the grace of God we had a full scale thunder and lightening storm when we pulled up to the ferry terminal and we had to take the car. It was a good thing too because the little man fell asleep and it would not have been pretty!

This year I decided to keep it simple and just plan on having a vehicle. Packing was SO MUCH easier, as was meal planning (can you say ice chest?). But we still put a lot of mileage on the bikes. It's about 7 miles round trip from the campground to the Village, where you just have to buy ice cream and esspresso. Along the way there is a sweet older couple that has an organic garden. We were terribly disappointed that they didn't have strawberries for sale this year. But after visiting with them the lady insisted on giving us their own pint from their kitchen table! We had a very happy boy!

On day 2 we rode bikes back to the ferry and caught the inter-island boat over to Friday Harbor to meet up with my Mom, Oma, and two relatives visiting from Holland. We did some touristy things with them for the day and headed back to the campground (the campground and ferry are both of course at sea level, but there is a pretty healthy hill in between- Christian was awesome!).

Christian and his Grammy(there will be no photos of me of course, but Grammy usually gets left out too so I'm trying to get her in the photos when I can)

On our last day we woke up to discover that the crows had made off with our stick of butter (damn birds were such a pain in the rear) but we managed to get some from another couple so I was still able to cook all day. We had a fabulous berry picking hike in the woods, played a little baseball and found a very beautiful sandy beach a few miles away to hang out at (and found some sort of large sea mammal's vertibrae - cool). We visited with the Boy Scout troop that was camping nearby and got them to teach us how to start a fire with two sticks - they were good sports and sweet kids. Christian's pumped to be a Boy Scout - and I'm very cool with that. At least they teach kids good values, like respect, honesty and always putting out your fire before bed.