We went camping (first time tent camping with baby!) on a sunny weekend. Us and the rest of Seattle.

I didn’t work that day so I got to Alex’s work early so we could zip off as soon as he was done. Unfortunately he ran long with a patient and had to do some documenting that couldn’t be done on the road (which he did while I drove on the way) so we still left with the rest of Seattle.

Eventually we got there (still during daylight, wohoo!) and set up our compound, I mean…tent and alcove.

I was a little worried with the general noise of the campground (since it was car camping and our portable sound machine crapped out as soon as we tried using it) and light streaming through the tent, that she wouldn’t sleep, especially in something that didn’t feel like like normal bed sheets. I shouldn’t have worried, she took so the sleeping bag like a champ! and was so excited exploring the campsite before bedtime that she wore herself out.

 

Kaya loved she walking around the campground and very quickly figured out how to navigate to where the dogs she could pet were and the kids who would play with her. Of course she had no idea how to look for cars so this meant we had to be watching for her darting out of our campsite every second, but we were happy to see her so happy.

We did some paddling and hiking for our long weekend (which I’ll definitely blog about next!) but wanted to touch on Sequest campground and a funny food related thing…

Right before leaving town I bought some freeze dried meals because I didn’t have time to prep anything at home and didn’t want to cook while camping. I know the packets say 2 person on it but we each eat one, so each meal was going to be $9-15/person!

While we were driving to one of our paddling destinations Alex remembered there was a Sweet Tomatoes (salad and soup buffet) nearby. We stopped there and ate a buffet for $12 a person!! No prep at all, no dishes, no purifying or carrying water, all delicious and healthy, and bottomless. Hahahaha… that put our packets into perspective and I’m going to try hard to prep my own food before we head out camping again.

Another thing I learned is that I definitely want Kaya to have her own sleeping bag (I ordered one as soon as we got home). We co-sleep for the most part and I wanted to make sure she was warm but that’s what layering is for and I found that while she stayed warm and fine I ended up halfway outside my sleeping bag multiple times and had to risk waking her up to get back in so I was a little cold and didn’t sleep well.

Anyway, back to Sequest. If you follow the trail out of Sequest State Park you can cross the street and go down to another trail that goes alongside Silver Lake. It’s got a nice walking path

With good views of Mount Saint Helens.

Besides the dogs walking along the path as well Kaya’s favorite was the lilly pads.

A fun thing for me is I’m (slowly) reading a book about observing nature and had just read that the color of the lilly pad flower actually indicates depth and that white is for the more shallow locations and yellow for deeper locations. Pretty cool!

If you follow the trail back to your campsite then a little further (following the sound of screaming children) you’ll find a playground and giant dirthill. The palyground didn’t really have a toddler section so we spent most of our time on the dirt hill (Kaya thought it more like a cliimbing rock wall and a slide) and the swings around the corner (in this case follow the sound of creaking swings).

Back at the campground we enjoyed a warm fire and of course…

S’mores!