We made a discovery last weekend. The majority of Southern Utah probably knows this, but it’s news to us. You can drive up Cedar Mountain and camp pretty much anywhere you want… for free. I heard this amazing news from a friend, but the idea of driving an hour at 6 pm and not knowing exactly where I was going to stay stressed me out a little bit. We got up there and drove around for probably 40 minutes, saying, “Should we just go back to the campground?”, “No look there’s people just camping over there.”, “Really we can go anywhere.?” Before we finally decided to take a side road and just go for it. It was magical. St. George is HOT still, soccer season will soon be taking up our Saturdays, and when we are home I always feel pressure to be working on something or other. This get-away was perfect, and totally worth the entire day of work that it took to make it happen.Continue Reading
I Camped at the Beach…. Day 2
My mind was a little hazy on day 2. The night before we’d gotten back to camp and crawled into our sleeping bags… all of us by 8:30… unshowered of course. After the kids were safely tucked in we sat outside the tent and listened to them giggle and tell each other stories.
Justin asked, “Do you want to light a fire?”
To which I replied, “I don’t really want to smell like campfire and beach.”
“Good point.”
So instead of cuddling by a campfire and listening to the ocean we crawled into the tent with our crazy munchkins. The artificial waves made by the noise maker app on my phone lulled us to sleep, drowning out most of the noise made by our neighbors.
We were down at our campgrounds beach by 7 am (San Onofre State Beach). It was a gray day, which may sound depressing, but it was more cozy. It wrapped us all up together as a family on that beautiful Sabbath morning, shutting out the rest of the world. Justin wanted to surf and I had a goal of looking into my kids eyes and really playing with them. I got slightly caught up in taking pictures, and Max refused to walk anywhere on the rocky beach even with shoes on, but I did a decent job of reaching my goal.
We found a ready made fort. It was exciting for a second… but the best part of forts is actually building them, so the excitement lasted about 2.5 seconds.Continue Reading
How I Survived Camping at the Beach…..Day 1
“I can do it as long as they have showers, ” I said. “No problem. San Onofre has showers.” he replied. So I was on board. Max is old enough that it’s not terrible to camp with him. Camping is cheaper than hotel rooms, making our travel budget stretch just a little further and allowing Justin to get more surfing time in, which makes him incredibly happy. Camping seemed so exciting when I was growing up… because we NEVER did it. I can remember camping twice before marriage (girls camp not included… and when my mom was in charge of girl’s camp we stayed in cabins.) So I am a complete camping newbie.
The day of the trip we got stuck in some bad construction traffic. We pulled into our campsite around 11 pm CA time which is midnight our time. Justin looked at my face and said, “Do you want to just find a hotel?” I was tempted, but I held strong, and now I want to marry the tent we recently purchased. It says on the box you can put it up in 10 minutes. Not true, you can put it up in 5. We had our kids in the tent within 15 minutes of arrival. Then I meandered over to the bathrooms to brush my teeth and saw this….
Yep those were the advertised “showers”. Outside beach showers. I tabled it for later and headed back to the tent. I crawled into our tent and listen to our neighbors talk and laugh loudly with their lanterns shining directly into our tent for the next 2 hours until the park rangers came and shut them down.
The next morning we helped Justin skope out a surf spot and then went and cuddled back in our tent. The sun comes up about 5:30 am in the summer in CA now, in case you were wondering…Continue Reading
