Camping

One of the things we've missed most about moving from Utah to Los Angeles is camping. In Logan we were always a 15 minute drive from great camping in the mountains. Here, it takes much longer than that just to get to a point where you can see a gap between the houses!

In the three years we've lived here, we have managed to go camping twice. The first time we met up with Brian's sister's family at the halfway point between here and Las Vegas (a fun destination...Calico Ghost Town. I recommend visiting there, if you go between October and March). We'd been living in our perfect climate for so long that we'd forgotten that the desert is hot in May...we spent that camping trip trying desperately to cool off. I think it reached over 100 degrees in the day and "cooled off" to about 80 degrees at night. It was fun, but way too hot. So, here we are, two years later, having learned our lesson. This time we went camping with our good friends, Kirk and Jamie, and found a nice area in southern Orange County. Sure, you have to drive an hour and a half to get there, but it was really, really fun to go camping again.

Kirk, Brian, Cole, and Jamie roasting hot dogs...these were not just any hot dogs, but cheese stuffed hot dogs. Mmmm.

More hot dog roasting...

Cole really enjoyed s'mores. This might be the first time he's ever had them. The first time we went camping he was only 11 months old.

This is the only group shot we managed to get...Weston was already asleep, and as you can see, Cole should have been.


Thankfully this campground had restroom facilities (if you count port-a-potties as restroom facilities, which I do. Anything is better than squatting in the bushes.) :) Anyway Kirk found this friendly toad in the port-a-potty. Apparently the toad really liked it there. Kirk tried to let him out, but he came right back.


Cole loved camping. He loves little animals and they were out in abundance. We saw birds, squirrels, jack rabbits, toads, and in this picture I think he's examining a lizard, though you can't really see it in the picture.


We learned that even though you can camp here, it's still So. California...you can't escape all the people. These guys were camped a little too close to us (in our opinion) and spent the night getting drunk, talking loud, and just generally being obnoxious. I was so tired that they didn't bother me, but they kept Kirk, Jamie, and Brian up a lot more than they would have wished. In the morning we discovered that our remaining firewood had disappeared (Kirk heard them talking about stealing firewood in the night) and a couple of the stumps by their campsite had disappeared (but a remnant was smoking in their firepit). If you look closely you can see Kirk's pointing at a guy passed out on the bench of the picnic table. He probably had a pretty serious hangover.

So, we did have a great time camping and hope to get out a few more times this summer and explore a few more places. I do look forward to the day when we can actually go in the mountains somewhere, all by ourselves, and do it right, but for now, we'll take what we can get!!