Car camping

Preparations for the big overnight boys camping trip have been made. Homemade waffle breakfast with fresh fruit fuelled us up! Plan to get on the 10:30 ferry which will take us to the peninsula. We made the 11:30. The ferry took us across Puget Sound to Southworth terminal on the Kitsap peninsula. From there we drove to Scenic Beach State Park, just past a village called Seabeck. While driving the turquoise water off the Hood canal and the Olympics Mountains in the distance appeared on our right. We arrived while the tide was still low so the beach was littered with craggy rock and oysters but not the seaweed that the Puget Sound coughed up on the Seattle beaches. After setting up camp the kids played in one of the two playgrounds within the camp. Ollie discovered tire spinning and spun so much that we had to take him back to the tent to lie down. In no time he was throwing up his waffle breakfast in our cooking pot. I was worried it was something else but he felt better after a short rest so we all went swimming. A nutritious dinner of hot dogs, strawberries, carrots and macaroni was followed by a forced shower for the kids. After a sufficient number of Ranier lagers, what the locals call vitamin R, I lost all moral authority with respect to preventing the kids from wrestling in the tent. Their utter disregard of my empty threats combined with the fire ban made the choice to go to bed with the kids a pretty easy one. Camping is such an irrational activity. I slept with a pair of jogging pants as my pillow and every time a kid had to go to the bathroom I had to escort them, half asleep and stumbling out the zippered nylon doorway, over the threshold into the murky forest where they peed on the rhododendrons, in their pajamas and everywhere in between. It's cold, uncomfortable, dirty, and inconvenient. It's a ton of work to set up and tear down. Nothing ever turns out exactly as you planned and you always forget something and break something else. But, I keep going back and now bringing my sons out into the woods is another dream come true. We woke up in the morning and made some pancakes. Ollie is learning how to use his pocket knife by cutting strawberries. We went on a hike through a lush forest with towering trees. Douglas firs and red cedar and Big Leaf Maple look down at us as we pass under smaller trees drooping with old man's beard. As the kids investigated the mushrooms and centipedes, counted rings on fallen tree trunks, banged on bark, slashed at ferns I'm reminded why we need to be a bit irrational at times. How else will they know they are part of nature?Okumaya devam et