Cascades Camping

Audrey's first camping trip was 14 months ago in the Utah desert. We had big plans to sleep under the starry skies frequently, but we had only made it out one other time since then. Maryland's massive bug population was our primary motivation to stay indoors for most of the last year.

Now, of course, we made it back to the Northwest and there is camping-a-plenty to be had. With most of our boxes unpacked and a long string of rain free days in the forecast, we decided to make for the hills and get another night outdoors before the summer ends.

We randomly flipped through our camping book and picked a place that was both close by, not too high in elevation, and was supposed to be scenic. We ended up staying at a campground just a few miles from the turnoff to Crystal Mountain, the ski area I logged quite a few runs at growing up. We decided to take a side trip up to see the mountain in the summer.

We managed to get back down the mountain without running our car into the ditch (that's a nod to a certain reader) and made it safely back to our campsite where we explored all we could find, which was mostly dirt, dirt, and more dirt. And this little caterpillar:

Audrey was 10 months old during our second camping trip and we weren't yet allowing her to indulge in sweets. This time was a whole different ballgame and a primary goal of the trip was the making and eating of smores. First the fire (and another comparison with last year)...

..then the smores. There is truly nothing better.

Audrey is still sleeping in a crib, sans blanket. We didn't think this would be a great night to test out a sleeping bag so we improvised with a tri-layer pajama ensemble. It was a bit warm when we put her down, but it got cold quickly and she seemed to do great. She slept better than us, finally popping her head over the side of the crib at 7am with a "HI!!!" after we had been quietly staring up at the brightening sky for the previous hour or so. She wanted to crawl into Mama's sleeping bag and Mama was happy to oblige.

Next, Audrey ran around, looking like an Ewok while Kelly and I cleaned up the campsite.

And finally, we got some tree hugging in at the 9.5 foot diameter Douglas Fir (there was a sign, I didn't measure it) at the end of our campground. We will remember to bring a few more dirt friendly toys on our next camping trip but this time out we made do with our imaginations and had a ton of fun.