9.03.2008

camping at the coast






Our love for camping has become a bit tainted. No longer can we just hop in the truck and head away into the wilderness-now we are plagued with renting a u-haul for all of Olivia's belongings. I wonder how something so small can need so much. After spending two hours loading the back of the truck, we headed off to the Washington coast for the adventure of a life time! We felt brave and courageous....just four hours later we were feeling overwhelmed and exhausted. Our first obstacle was overcoming the wind, which must have been blowing at 80 miles an hour! It blew over our tent several times before we could manage to find a spot below some low lying tree limbs which helped to shelter it. JJ assured me that the winds die down at night! After bundling Olivia is 5+ layers, we enjoyed the campfire and felt like everything was going great, until bedtime. Olivia actually slept right through all the ruckus; those same limbs which sheltered our tent, were now thrashing back and forth as JJ and I prayed that our tent wouldn't be punctured or blow over while we were in it! We thought we bought a great, sturdy tent. HA! Finally, when Olivia woke up for her 3am feeding (after having slept for 6 hours) we decided since we hadn't slept a wink, to move everything to the canopy of the truck. So for two nights we climbed in the back of the canopy, onto our air mattress, put Olivia right next to us in her car seat, and slept soundly! Not exactly the tent camping we had in mind. Another obstacle included fighting off two furry little creatures in the middle of the night when JJ went back to the tent on a diaper run! Yes, two fat raccoons seemed to think our food and garbage was there's to enjoy! The Nerve! All in all, the weather was great, aside from the wind, really, I can hardly believe the sun was shinning all weekend! Aside from our little obstacles, we are grateful for the memories we are making as a young family and all things considered, would do almost all the same thing all over again...

P.S. JJ says next year we're buying a trailor!

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