The Camping Trip

It's actually cloudy this morning and I have few minutes before I have to wake M. up, shove her in the shower then head for our monthly beta. I'm feeling hopeful and I hate hope sometimes. If it's negative, it's the c-word and we keep on plugging.

DtD Story (just a short one)

DtD took care of our girls while we were gone. He's actually a fantastic cat sitter. M. was talking to our boy last night and tells him how upset we are about the court ruling and how it sucked to come home to it. He replies:

Yeah, I was going to throw out that paper.

He he. Funny boy.

A Camping We have Gone

M. and I haven't been camping in years, ironically because of lack of money. We had just about the most perfect trip ever. It was just the two of us...ahhhhhhh....

A long time ago, back when we both had well-paying full-time jobs and I wasn't in school, M. and I spent a year, and a lot of money, making sure we had primo camping gear. It was worth it. And just so everyone knows, while we have good camping gear...good enough to go backpacking, M. and I are hard core CAR campers. We camp small and we camp comfortable and we camp with showers.

Back to the trip...

We camped at the Dungeness Recreation Area, home of Dungeness Spit and Dungeness crab, outside Sequim. It's right over the Strait of Juan de Fuca and on a clear night you can see Victoria. It's some of the most beautiful country I've ever seen: rolling fields and meadows, coastal forests, just amazing.

The whole area is very strong in agriculture so everywhere you go there are u-pick farms: lavender, blueberries, strawberries, raspberries. There are dairies selling raw milk and organic farms. Lots of fresh and healthy food.

When we arrived we were shocked to find that it was COLD. It had been so warm in Seattle that I had brought only one sleeping bag and a sheet. After I admitted my stupidity three-fold, we went to Costco and bought a cheap sleeping bag (another reason I love this area, you're literally twenty minutes from civilization.)

Sleeping on the ground was miserable and I spent the entire first night dreaming that we'd staked the tent on the back of a creek and were falling in. My hips are bruised since I'm a side sleeper and my shoulders are sore. The one gear item we don't have are some good sleeping mats and I think we'll be adding them to our stash before our next trip.

We cooked foil dinners in the coals and roasted marshmallows. We sipped hot chocolate as we shivered by the fire. We got DIRTY.

During the day we drove around, visited a U-pick flower farm and brought back the world's largest bouquet back to the campground, so we had flowers for the trip. We picked bunches of lavender and bought jam. We picked up presents for the boy. We went into Port Angeles and saw these amazing, elaborate sand sculptures. We went for this amazing walk at the camp ground that took up through this beautiful meadow, a coastal forest and an overlook where we could look out over the whole Dungeness area.

There was even some drama...a sea canoe with six passengers capsized on the strait and the Coast Guard couldn't get a ship in close enough to rescue them because of the waves. They ended up pulling them out of the water with a helicopter. They closed off the park and M. went and watched the rescue.

Overall, it was an absolutely fantastic trip. Although I'm very glad to be home (I'm always happy to come home) I can't wait to go camping again.

Time to wake up my girl and get going to the doc.