August Adventure! (8 of 12!)

For the August Adventure, we did the unthinkable.  We loaded up 2 Subarus, 1 Van, 6 kids, 2 dogs, 3 tents, 3 coolers, and lots of bundles of wood and we headed out camping!  This may not seem so strange for those of you whom frequent the great outdoors.  However, for our little bunch, the idea of camping was an adventure in itself!  The destination? Beverly Beach State Park – Oregon!  We decided that we would take the journey, first to Salem to visit Ben and see where he was living for law school.  After all, if he was going to be there for three years, we needed to be able to envision his life and his location.  After the quick stop in Salem, we headed to the coast!  On the way there, we hit a few small bumps.  Minor little bumps.  The first one was when the black clouds started rolling in and the ipod weather forecast said, “chance of rain – 100%.”  Okay, so this was not such a small bump, but we ignored it for the most part.  The next bump was when Ben called panicked asking where we went.  Me: “We followed the signs.”  Ben:  “I can’t find any signs and the stupid GPS keeps telling me to turn around!  Oh no, I think I am heading the wrong way.”  At the turnoff for the coast, somehow Ben’s crew got turned around and started heading in the wrong direction.  I laughed my head off as we got him back on track (only 1/2 hour behind the rest of us.)  As we pulled into the State Park, the rain was just starting to sprinkle.  We quickly found our camp site and ran around like crazy people to get our tents up before the real rain started.  Okay, well actually, Steve and I ran around like crazy people to get our tent up.  Jen and Greg sort of moseyed around.  We had our tent up, fly on, and partially loaded before Jen and Greg had their (borrowed) tent even rolled out of the bag.  At this point Ben and Kelsey showed up and we got their tent and the canopies up.  As we all stood there huddled under the canopy making mac n’ cheese for the kids we wondered if we were going to make it through the next two nights.  That first night, the rain came down!  Sheets and sheets of it.  We heard from the park rangers that they hadn’t had any rain for 8 weeks.   Of course.  8 weeks with no rain and now torrential downpour on us, the novice campers!  In the morning, we emerged from out tents to find out that everyone had survived.  For the most part, all the tents had stayed (somewhat) dry and that everyone was having a good time.  We cooked pancakes and decided to head down to check out the beach.  The rain had slowed to a “mist” and we figured we could still explore. 

The little campsite was so cute!  Roads for kids to ride bikes, the beach and sand!  Lots and lots of sand!

We spent all morning and afternoon at the beach and had so much fun!  After the beach, we headed back to the campsite for lunch, games, and preparing for dinner.  We don’t have any documentation of it, but we made foil dinners over the fire.  I was bound and determined to have a camping-esque type of meal and it actually worked!  A friend from boot camp told us to make sure to prep as much of the food as we could at home and, thanks to her advice, it turned out to be a fabulous dinner!  Individual foil wraps full of veggies and salmon (for some) cooked over the fire.  It felt so authentic! After dinner we headed back to the beach for amazing photos, Frisbee, and more fun with cousins.  

      Ben and Kelsey found a cute wagon on Craigslist that Steve and I strapped to the top of the Subaru and brought down to them.  Well, to be completely truthful, Steve was afraid of strapping things to the roof so Greg did it, but we brought it down to them nonetheless.  The wagon turned out to be a huge hit with the kids and was fun to have on the beach.  

That night, we were able to get snuggled into our tents before the rain started again.  Steve and I had bought the new REI Kingdom 6 tent before the trip (we got an amazing deal on it!  Normally $500 ish. We got it for $175 on sale!)  After all the rain, we were quite happy with our purchase.  We were the driest ones after two days of rain had saturated everything. 

In the morning, we had to move quicker than we had wanted as Steve and I had to hurry home to sign closing documents for the sale of the little green house.  (Turns out we got stuck in TERRIBLE traffic and missed the appointment.  Luckily we were able to postpone things until the following Monday and, after that, little green was officially someone else’s little green love). 

We had to quickly pack up the waterlogged campsite, but didn’t do so until after we had eaten pancakes, explored the campground a little more and played by the fire.  We all agreed that this campout had been quite the amazing adventure and we were already looking up dates to book the sites again for next year!  We figured we had made it through two days of rain and had an amazing time. Imagine the fun to be had without the bad weather!  Also, Wesley was still crawling at this point.  We had to carry him around the campsite to keep him somewhat dry.  Anytime we put him down, he crawled through the mud and got his clothes soaked.  Soaked clothes = cold child = stressed out mom!  Next year will be better with him walking!

  We collectively agreed that we are definitely car campers or as Kelsey and I declared, “glamping” is totally something we would like to embrace!  We also agreed that we would spend the next year adding to our camping gear supplies and made a pact that all birthday presents would relate to camping if no other fabulous ideas took precedent. 

We are so excited that we took this adventure!  My mom’s family had a tradition to go camping every year to Beaver, Utah.  We didn’t get to go on the yearly trip many times, but want to provide those kind of fun memories for our kids.  Beverly Beach could potentially be our version of “Beaver.”  The outdoors, family, traditions, tents, games, wagons, make believe, road trips, camping food, and headlamps.  Seriously, could I ask for anything better?!