We did our second camping trip of the season at nearby Butano, one of Tom’s favorite state parks. And, for good reason. The place is beautiful–there aren’t too many campsites, they’re all nestled in redwoods, and despite the relative nearness of the place, it feels like your a world away from the hustle and bustle of daily life.
As always, the kids loved it, especially since Assaf and Tom were able to request a different site from our original assignment–our site was adjacent to a wide-open play area that the kids dubbed their “outdoor fort.” We found boards to balance on logs as make-shift teeter totters, the kids made fairy houses, balanced on logs and climbed trees and just generally ran around like maniacs! We could see them from our campsite and, since the space was relatively open, we felt fairly comfy letting them run off on their own. It was great!
We didn’t make ice cream this time around, but we did make s’mores. Cameron tended to like just eating the marshmallows or graham crackers by themselves, but not feeding her chocolate was just fine with us!
We also went to a couple of nature programs — one on banana slugs (we saw tons of banana slugs and Cameron was remarkably good at spotting them!!) and the other on birds (featuring the marbled murrelet). For their participation, the kids got Little Ranger books with a stamp for each activity in which they participated. And, despite Dylan’s initial reluctance to participate in both programs, he ended up loving them and is still playing Ranger/Little Ranger back at home. He is dragging his Little Ranger book around with him and reading us stories around a ‘campfire’.
The kids had so much fun, they had a tough time with the idea of leaving, but the good thing is that they’re all looking forward to the next camping trip next year!!
Anyway, here are some photo highlights of the fun….
Here are the kids, totally stoked on the wide-open play area right below our campsite.
listening to the ranger tell us about banana slugs. We learned a lot! They have ripple skirts, they poop dirt out of their mantels, they’ll eat just about anything, they’re territorial, their rear ends have a mucus plug which collects stuff they sometimes eat, they have one breating hole…! Cameron loved declaring that she saw “another banana slug. over there. by the ground.” The big ones were mommy and daddy slugs and the little ones were mei mei and Dylan slugs (incidentally, she no longer calls Dylan “dih dih”…now it’s Dyl-Ann).
Saw LOTS of these of varying sizes.
The second nature program about birds included a game where kids paired off as Marbled Murrelet parents who had to get fish from the ocean for their baby chick and come back in time to defend their baby’s food from predators like ravens. Only one parent at a time could fetch fish, but two parents were required to defend the nest against the raven/predator/ranger! So, kids had to run fast!
Dylan and Taliana did pretty well. They placed second in the first round of the game and third in the second round.
Glad the kids loved the trip. It was definitely fun for us grown-ups as well…plus, it was super cute to see the kids with headlamps strapped to their heads!
