Family Campout

In mid-September we went camping down by Mt. Rainier for one night.  The kids both had a blast and it went pretty well.  We found a campsite near the runway of the Mt. Rainier airport.  We set up our tent and explored the area around the campsite, which was not far from a river and had soft,  mossy little and Adam built a fire when it got dark.  For dinner, we roasted hot dogs and Pillsbury biscuits and cracked open peanuts.  Instead of the backpacking mattresses that Adam and I have always slept on in the past, we brought a regular queen sized air mattress for us all to sleep on.  The kids thought it was so much fun to play on our bed in the tent, and after we came home Holly said it was her favorite part of the whole trip. 

We got Ben and Holly each a mini lantern of their own, and they each had a little camping chair to sit in.  Holly has her own Kindercone sleeping bag that we bought last year, and we borrowed another kid-sized sleeping bag from friends.  The only hard part of the campout was getting the kids to sleep, because they were so wound up and distracted by the tent. Once we all got to sleep, we all slept well.  I slept on the big mattress with the kids and Adam slept on his thin mattress.

For breakfast we had another campfire, and we ate cereal with milk and strawberries and muffins from home.  I have always liked making yummy campfire meals, but this time we thought it was best to keep the food as simple as possible, and that was a good choice. 

Our campsite was in an area where the ground was made of soft, mossy mounds.  There was a tiny hill (actually a giant tree root with soft moss growing over it) right next to our tent that made for a good stage. 

Once we packed up the tent, we had planned to do one of our favorite hikes at Rainier, but as soon as the tent was out of site, Holly wanted nothing more to do with the wilderness.  She kept insisting on going home, but we took a short walk around a pretty lake and had a picnic lunch before heading back.

It was a lot of stuff to pack up for being gone less than 24 hours, but we had a pretty fun time.  Holly slept on her floor in her play tent for the next 3 weeks.