Just got back from a super fun, two-night camping trip in Big Sur. Love these smiles! The kids had a great time running around the very spacious campsite, finding and catching bugs, and building fairy houses during the day and making s’mores (night one) and mint chocolate chip ice cream (night two) in the evening.
This was Cameron’s first camping trip and she just loved it.
She giggled at the scrub jays and squirrels that came into our camp, chased them across the campsite, and obediently avoided the “crocodile” street where the crocodile cars were “swimming.” Of course, she enjoyed her s’mores on the first night.
Here’s Dylan mowing down on his.
Once more, we camped out with Heather, Assaf and Taliana who now also have added Perfect to their sweet little family.
Dylan loves playing with both of the girls. In fact, he was super excited to spend the first night in their tent with them! The only problem was that we could hear them talking excitedly late into the night…and they all sprang awake at the crack of dawn!
Since we were all up so early in the morning (I mean, it was like 6am or something!), we got a nice early start to our day.
After the kids warmed up by the fire and had some oatmeal, we let them pack their own DIY trail mix before heading out for a short but moderately strenuous, half-mile hike up to Valley View.
It was a fairly steep and rocky trail, but all of the kids were doing it!!! We had to pause at a bench for some refueling along the way and we had to gingerly avoid TONS of poison oak along the trail (Dylan and Taliana got pretty good at identifying poison oak plants!), but we finally did make it to the view point!
Once at the top, we enjoyed the scenery while eating our almond butter and hazelnut butter and jelly sandwiches.
Once back at the camp, Assaf took the girls swimming in the river(!). Taliana was so brave to go into the chilly water!!!
At first, Dylan didn’t want to go, but once Cameron and Tom returned from the river, he was ready to head out, so the four of us took a return trip there.
We didn’t think to bring swimsuits, so Dylan couldn’t really go into the water, but he climbed a rock with Tom and crossed a narrow, stick bridge to get to the island where Taliana was.
Meanwhile, Cameron explored stuff on the shores and had a blast tossing rocks into the water.
Pretty much immediately after a yummy dinner of Heather and Assaf’s minestrone, we got to work on mixing up the ice cream ingredients.
Cameron is so strong! Even though the ice cream ball easily weighs 10 pounds, she was able to actually pick it up and roll it to someone else!!
Too bad the poor thing sacked out on my shoulder before the ice cream was ready!!!
The rest of the kids (and us grownups) all had cones to minimize the dish washing!!!
This year, we opted for another coconut milk based ice cream and, boy, was it rich!!
For our last day in the area, we stopped by the ranger cubs program before heading out for a quick stop at Julia Pfeiffer Burns S.P. where we hiked the very short hike to see the small waterfall. The view of the ocean here as well as along the highway is just stunningly gorgeous.
Again, poor Cameron sacked out in the backpack carrier, so she missed it!!
The only downside to the trip was driving home through incredibly windy conditions and having the top of our cargo box actually fly off! Yes. We heard a thump and I immediately noticed one of our sleeping bags bounce on to the side of the highway! Tom immediately pulled over and I couldn’t believe it when he told me the top of the cargo box was gone! Luckily, Heather and Assaf weren’t too far behind and we were able to retrieve all items save for one of our 3 sleeping bags!
So, despite the cargo box incident and me freezing in the middle of the night (I’m on the lookout for warmer sleeping bags!), the camping trip was a total success. All of the kids really, really loved it and it was so nice to be outdoors with them! Looking forward to August, when we take another camping trip to nearby Butano.
More pictures are here, and we actually gave Dylan a disposable camera to use (since we couldn’t find his little digital camera) so we’ll hopefully post his pictures soon after we get them developed…!
