1) when you go camping with toddlers... two of them... bring someone else with you... if you can swing it, get that someone else to be two people and those two people to be your parents. Seriously, having two extra sets of hands who will willingly spend most of their waking hours playing with your children will not only save your sanity... they will actually help you enjoy your trip.
2) buy a tent that fits at least three times the amount of people you require in it. So we're four people... so we obviously require a 12 person tent. We managed to sell our 6 person tent and buy a 12 person tent (The Eureka Northern Canyon 12) on sale. This tent was like a condo and it make camping life so much sweeter.
3) only camp at a campsite next to a loud river. I'm not kidding. Our site was on a river and it was amazing. The white noise put out by that river totally saved us. The girls went to bed at 7pm on their own for the most part... unlike our first camping trip that required us to drive around for 30 minutes after sunset and then carefully extract them from their car seats and put them into their playpens in the tent holding our breath while we carefully zipped the tent back up. In this set up we were able to walk out of the tent, walk back in and talk in and while they kept on sleeping. a river is key. a loud ocean would do nicely too.
4) order pizza. instead of cooking every camping meal find a good restaurant near by and get that extra person (or two) to go and pick it up while you put your baby(ies) to sleep. Hot pizza + wine + river = bliss.
day one
it rained 15 minutes after our tent was up... thank god our tent. was. up.
there were zero bugs for the most part... except for one wasp which Andrew assured me wasn't a wasp... who stung me
seriously the girls love eating outside in their chairs on the picnic table... rain... cold... no problem... they love it
discovery: isla loves to cuddle while eating
very cute
our first hike started out with a pile of ... well... crap... bear crap... we think... so I will admit... I was a tad nervous we might just meet yogi bear on this trip... luckily he kept to himself
see... it's easy to hike with two babies...
admission: Isla is a ginger... there I said it... a ginger and we love it. For the last year I really thought she was a blonde but this photo is proof... no idea where the ginger came from!
Alice: so this is where I sleep...
cuddling + eating
crazy + eating
Alice wants to walk when she wants to walk and where she wants to walk
here stands a giant moose
it was seriously enormous
if only one of us had gone up to pose with it...
then you would get how truly huge he was
what better way to spend a rainy morning then in a pancake house
Polly's Pancake house makes a mean pancake
I should know... I ate six of them
this is what our new tent looks like... clearly it failed the waterproof test but the sheer size of it made up for that
I'm kind of sad about this trip being over. It was our last planned vacation... and we had a great time.
Who knows where we will be off to next.