Friday Night Camping

We have been dying to go camping since the last time we finish, especially after we got some REI Kindercones-- kids sleeping bags.  OH MY GOODNESS, we love them, they are great, if you have small kids and camp a lot, its a great purchase. (Although I'll be honest we didn't pay full price.) We had the chance so we hopped on a overnight trip.  We packed up assured we could find something within an hour of our house.  My husband had no success on the internet finding info, but surely there is something, there are mountains in our backyard.  NOTHING, literally nothing, we tried so many canyons, all no camping watershed zone.  Dumb population who needs to drink water.  Three hours later, we were tired, defeated, and hungry.  I was ready to go home, or call Brent's sister and crash in their basement.  But then we pulled into a small Podunk town, and low and behold we found an "Authentic" Mexican restaurant.  We left our hot dogs in the cooler and ate yummy yummy salsa.  My kids even ate their taquitos, its amazing how much they eat if you don't feed them for three hours. At this point, we continued heading north, my husband planned on calling my parents and figuring out where they're undeveloped property was.  I was still hoping for a campsite.  We took the road through the ski resort, it was eerily empty. Then came the road that was closed Dec 1. -June 1, a little while later saw a turn off, and low and behold through the thicket there was a firepit.  There wasn't a flat campsite, but who cared at this point we were in the wilderness, sort of. The previous users of the area apparently had just left, because they did not fully put out their fire, and left a wiener on a broken roaster.  The kids had a fun time poking the coals, so that was a plus, Brent and I aren't much of firepit campers, its so messy, and the smoke stinks.  So it was a fun experience for the kids.

 

Did I mention we were car camping, we are hoping to take the kids on a short backpacking trip this summer, but that night was car camping.  We think if we weren't car camping we could have found something closer to home.  Although that is not were we are planning to go backpacking, anyone want to join us on a easy slow 3-day backpacking trip in the Unitas in August?

Since we were car camping, we had Zingers (Hostess Snack). J thought it was really cool they were called zingers.

I was so tired, I think I fell asleep before the kids did. I was the second to last up too. It felt good to sleep almost soundly in the mountains, I did have a big lump of dirt under me. There is my fantastic husband taking down our REI tent that we can also use for backpacking.  And I am right not to like campfires, my daughter was covered head to toe in ash.

 The next morning we of course went hiking by a brook no less. It was really pretty up there, and completely undeveloped, minus the ski runs.

Want to hear more, my husband also blogged.