Camping trip

We went camping at the beach this weekend. We have been looking forward to this for several months. We got a tent over the winter, started getting all the nessecary supplies and finally last weekend made definite plans and reservations. The kids were excited, we were excited, and our friends decided to join us for a weekend of fun and camping at the beach.

The kids were very anxious, the night before they tried to head out with the empty suitcases.

Then Friday afternoon we were on our way, with a packed van for a full weekend of camping:

We had a perfect site right over the dune from the ocean (that's our tents you see there on the right side of the picture, ours has the red on top).

We had a beautiful sunset:

The kids had fun playing in the sand and ocean:

And around the campfire:

We got to test our newest tent. It failed. The good news: we didn't have to test the tent in the rain. The bad news: the wind blew the tent down long before the rain came. In fact the tent came down on top of us at about 2am. Once we managed to get out and get things as secure as possible we headed home for about 3 hours of sleep, then back to the campground to try again with our first new tent. The winds just continued to go from bad to worse. We finally decided not to set up the first new tent and give up finishing the weekend camping. By the time we had everything packed into the van, the driving wind and rain arrived. At least we were dry in the van, as we drove through the campground there were about 2 tents still standing, and one of those looked like it was ready to go at any moment. Everyone one else's tents were plastered to the ground or flapping in the wind, with everything getting soaked. So, hey, we may have had a tent laying on our heads at 2am, but we stayed dry, it wasn't all bad.

Sorry, no pictures of the tent mangled on the ground whipping around the pack-n-play, the camera was in the tent along with most everything else. And by the time we got it out of the tent in the suitcase, we had to concentrate on getting the tent into the van instead of having it blow away.

All in all, it was probably the worst camping trip I have ever had. Not a good first time for Quincy and Mike. I'm glad to be home, showered, and inside my very secure house. And hopeful that tomorrow will be a wonderful Mother's Day. Not the one we had planned, but it still has a chance to be good.