Good-bye backpacking, Hello family camping

Aaron and I used to backpack.  Nothing hard core, the most was a backpacking trip for 3 days on our honeymoon.  But then we went to graduate school. And had kids.  We have definitely done some tent camping in the meantime, squeezing our growing family into our 3 person backpacking tent and cooking oatmeal and boiling hot dogs on a backpacking stove.

This year we decided to accept the reality of our season of life. 

As we prepared for our first camping trip of this summer we fully embraced camping as a family of five:  We bought a coleman stove.  We purchased camp chairs for each person in the family. We borrowed a HUGE tent from our neighbors.  We even packed the portable crib.  Everyone had a pillow and extra blankets and a suitcase of clothes and toys.  And we loaded all of this into, yes, you guessed it, our MINI VAN.

We were going to camp in comfort.  Say good-bye to backpacking and minimalist car camping, we brought out the big guns.

It took us 3 days to pack. Maybe 2 hours to load the car. 6 hours to drive to the coast. Another couple of hours to pitch a huge tent and set up camp.  We did it.

Day 2 it poured rain.  It is the Pacific Northwest, we should have been more prepared.  The borrowed tent was collecting gallons of rain. Aaron feared it would collapse on us and our children in the middle of the night.  So, we abandoned the comforts of a large tent for the confined space of the van. Yes, we all slept in the van and I confess we slept quite comfortably.  But then we got up and had to pack everything back up into our mini van.  That was no small feat especially since everything was now muddy and wet, including the 3 children. 

So after 2-3 hours of packing the van, 6 hours of driving back home, an entire evening of unpacking the camping gear, and 8 loads of laundry later everything was put away...and we started planning the next camping trip...which included the purchase of our very own 8 person tent with a rain fly.

Our friends, Aime and Ash (and their super dog Seamus) get major props for participating in this inaugural camping trip and for being totally awesome to camp with.