Camping with a baby

When it is a high of 60 and a low of 40 degrees outside and you are on
the California coast camping in sand dunes you start to think to yourself..."Why did we agree to go camping?"

We have become pretty good friends with Cadence's parents since I have started watching her. And since we are good friends, we do stuff together...like go along with them on a camping trip. We thought "What a great thing to do to kick off our summer vacation!"










side note: Brett finished up his first year of medical school last Friday. We haven't gotten all of his grades yet from the last tests, but we know that he passed with flying colors. So he will be starting his 2nd year of med school in August some time. We are so proud of him!

Now back to my camping story.


We got all of our gear together, packed up enough stuff to last us a week, although we were only gone for 3 days and 2 nights. We stuffed our Jeep to the limit and took off to the beautiful area called Bodega Bay.

Camp was set up on the side of a sand dune, which by the way is not the best place to take babies that are the least bit mobile and like to put things in their mouths. We ate great food, drank a little and had a good time...until

At 8:30 pm our friends thought it would be a great idea to watch the sun set on the beach. Well the sun had pretty much set by this point, but they still wanted to go, so we packed up the sleepy babies into their backpacks and headed for the mile long hike in the sand dunes to look at the water. I took this picture the next day of the hill that we "hiked" up. You can't really see it, but the hill which is made up of all soft sinking under your feet sand is about a 50 - 60 % upgrade. I practically crawled up it and needed to stop at least 5 times to catch my breath and to tell my body that it couldn't quit on me now, it had to wait until I got to the top.

That was the beginning of the mile long hike, the other hills that we had to overcome seemed like mounds of dirt compared to the first one. When we got out to the ocean it was all dark, there was about a 15 foot drop to the water, it was freezing with a strong wind. The babies woke up as soon as we got there and we stayed all of 30 minutes. I was dreading the trip back, not because of the time it would take, but because of that hill we would have to somehow manage to get down without falling head over heel. I voiced my opinion about this and they suggested that we take the LONGER but SAFER route back. It contained more switch backs and took only 5 minutes longer but it was FLAT! No hill no mound nothing! Oh how I wanted to curse them for making us go over the mountain on the way in, but then I thought "Look at what you just did, shut up and be proud of yourself." So I kept quite about my frustrations and enjoyed the rest of the hike back to camp.

That night Brett got sick, we don't know why but he was sick for the rest of the trip. So that slowed the rest of us down. But we still had fun. The following day we drove to another beach near by and let the girls play in the sand. They loved it. Cadence tried with all of her might to eat it, but we were too on top of her for her to succeed. Chloe being the opposite had fun playing the sand but had no desire to eat it. Such a good little baby.

Besides going to the beaches, eating food and Brett getting sick, we enjoyed yummy smores, horse shoes, bad mitten and being scared by the raccoons who were way to brave for their own good. (They really wanted our food whether we were there or not.)

I think that we have a few more trips planned with Marie and Dallas to go camping in other parts of the state. I can't wait to see what other adventures lie ahead.