wilderness

First of all - Happy Birthday to my charming husband! Nick is celebrating 28 years of life today and I'm so thankful we're celebrating together. He's an incredible guy and I feel lucky to call him mine. Happy Birthday Nick!

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We had a really awesome weekend with some of our favorite people. Really, really awesome.

We went camping. I love camping, but it's hard to give up a precious weekend that we could spend working on the house, and with marching band, weddings, showers, graduations....man. It's hard to get away! Fortunately, we took the plunge and during a dinner date with Josh & Mikalah the four of us reserved a campsite.

After finalizing the reservation we realized there were no showers or modern toilets in the campground. There were,  however, some pretty classy vault toilets (just kidding on the classy part) along with a solar powered water pump and the opportunity to cut your own firewood.

There was also a one mile hike into the campground and it featured a quarter mile jaunt up a pretty steep incline. Carrying all of this.

You can call us expert backpackers. Oh, and all that stuff was just what Nick and I brought. Josh and Mikalah had their own load to bear. Everything except the dog kennels needed to be hauled into camp, and you know what? We did it. And it was fine. Not fun, but totally worth it.

Because this was our campground. After getting to the top of the bluff we walked through the grass meadows to get to our site. Our campsite was partially wooded and partially surrounded by the grasses. We could just barely see the next campsite through the trees, but we were far from them and only caught occasional sounds from their site. Mostly, we heard crickets, birds and the wind. Incredible.

The dogs were pretty much in heaven the entire time. They got to run around, smell a million new smells, climb up and down the hill a half a dozen times and (the best part) sleep in our tent with us! In fact, when I woke up in the middle of the night on Sunday I found Shalai occupying 3/4 of my pillow. I sat up to roll over and by the time I was shifted around in my sleeping bag and ready to lay down she had commandeered the remaining 1/4 of the pillow. She was really too cute and content to move, so I went pillowless for the rest of the night.

 We didn't have much of an agenda for the weekend. Sleep (as much as possible while in a tent), explore the park, check out the beach, read some books and eat ridiculous amounts of delicious food. I think the majority of the weight we carried up to the site came from food, but man oh man was the eating good!

This was one of my favorites - banana boats. Slice the banana peel on one side, stuff the peel with peanut butter, chocolate chips and marshmallows. Roll banana in tin foil. Place in fire for 5-10 minutes. Enjoy. (You're welcome.)

All the work and the rustic feel to the campsite was absolutely worth it. The surroundings were beautiful. And so peaceful and still.

 Sunset was incredible.

We're already talking about heading back next year and I'm pretty sure if dogs could talk they'd be petitioning for a repeat visit next weekend.

 That was our weekend! How was yours?