Camping Adventure

Camping is one of my favorite outdoor activities.  My family camped fairly often growing up--both car camping (when you lug all the gear to the campsite in the car) and backpacking (on your back!).  I am thrilled this is an activity that my husband also loved growing up and that we can enjoy together as a couple.

Recently our friends who live in Southern California booked a campsite in the Redwoods area north of San Francisco, and we all met up for a night around the campfire.  This was the first camping trip since our big move, so trying to remember where we had tucked all the camping gear into our much smaller new apartment was the first adventure.

By the time we arrived to the campgrounds after work on Friday, only a few minutes of daylight remained.  The good news is that we are pros at setting up our tent in the dark.

We enjoyed a perfect campfire dinner our friends prepared over the coals, and then we hung out several more hours chatting and roasting marshmallows for s'mores.

 

Morning brought multiple types of coffee and breakfast burritos before we headed our for a hike.

New Orleans Iced Coffee

Camping Stove Espresso!

Drip Coffee and Apple Crisp

Breakfast burritos and fresh fruit

I tried to capture how tall and straight those redwood trees are!

Highlights from the hike included salamander and banana slug sightings, downed redwood trees from a recent storm, and an increasing amount of poison oak on the trail as we neared the end of the hike (lowlight, but luckily no one had reactions!).

Fungi

Redwood trees are so huge they often live through big forest fires.  The trunks blacken and hollow out from the fire, but they continue growing.  These were so cool!

My excitement for camping was renewed, and we've already started thinking about other locations we want to check out.  We might need to take a camping trip down to Southern California next time...