CAMPING!!

Sean suggested on Wednesday that we take advantage of a rare day off and go camping. I thought there was no reason not to, so we threw together a last minute adventure to the mountains. I'm so glad we did, because it was so fun and relaxing (well, as relaxing as camping with a two year old can be.)

We picked a spot only about an hour away from us, in case we needed to call it quits early. It was this beautiful little lake tucked high up in the mountains. It was pretty crowded, since it was a holiday weekend, but we were lucky enough to get a camping spot that was perfectly shady and had a little stream next to it. The crowds were not bad though, everything was so spread out that we didn't even notice too many people.

It was one of those glorious weekends where things just came together naturally and easily, which I love. Fishing with Griffin was fun, but insane, naturally. Imagine keeping him out of the tackle box, convincing him there only needed to be one piece of bait on the hook, that Daddy had a fishing pole and Griffin had his own (hookless) fishing pole and that there was no trading. Dodging the pole and lines that were being flung in every direction. Needless to say, we didn't catch any fish. Sean and Griffin also took our little blow-up raft out for a bit, imagine trying to explain to Griffin why he can't paddle the boat. "I do it" is his newest phrase.

I took Griff on a little hike, where we searched for baby bears, and found "bear" poop, which Griffin thought was hilarious. He RAN the whole quarter mile hike, uphill and down. Griffin also enjoyed taking his shoes off and dipping his feet in the stream, and digging his toes into the mud. Sean and Griff followed the hike up with a little afternoon nap, while I enjoyed the luxury of sitting in the sun reading. We had a gourmet dinner of chicken kabobs and corn on the cob cooked over the fire, followed by roasting hot dogs and marshmallows. Griffin had no interest in eating either of these, the marshmallows were too sticky (I know, Griffin refused food!!?!) and he really just wanted to turn the hot dogs to charcoal. Keeping Griff contained in the campsite was a challenge, especially when he wanted to "help" Sean in building the fire, but once we turned the tent into a rocket ship we were golden.

Griff liked walking around the campground seeing all the other campers, and once it got dark we went on a little drive to help Griffin get sleepy. We saw a deer on our drive and a beautiful almost full moon. It took a little coaxing to get him to settle down and go to sleep, but he loved sleeping the tent. The next morning we had gourmet breakfast burritos, spent the morning chasing chipmunks, and headed home. It was a wonderful experience, and we will definitely be doing it again soon!

I put more pictures up on facebook, for those of you who have it :)