A-Camping We Will Go

This past weekend, we went down to Henry Cowell Redwoods to camp with my parents, Dan & Tami & the kids, Tami's parents, her brother, and her sister & her family. A total of 11 adults and 5.5 kids. WHEW!! Something happened with the reservation of one of the sites and we were given a handicapped site. Cool, I'm thinking, it'll be flat and relatively close to the bathroom. When my parents checked in, they were unable to occupy the third campsite because they didn't have a disabled placard. Great. So Josh and I brainstorm, he talks to our friend Mike, who then makes a quick phone call to his dad, WHO IS DISABLED!! Mike's dad lets us borrow his placard and we think we're good to go. We get to the ranger station and the check-in lady asks for the placard. Check. Then for the accompanying paperwork. Uh, what? No check. After a few minutes of going back & forth with the check-in lady about the paperwork, she gives us our little tag to put in the truck and we're on our way. Woo hoo, we did it! Oh, how wrong we were... Evidently, this piece of paper, or whatever it is, has to accompany the placard to prove that the holder of the placard is the registered owner. Which we were not. We get to the site, unload and set up camp. It was also Tami's birthday so we celebrated by each of us finding the biggest stick that we could and giving her 28 spankings. No, really, we gathered at the Shirley/Hernandez site for brownies, ice cream, and s'mores. Josh and I hadn't eaten any real food since about 5:00, so we grilled up some bratwurst when we got back to our site.









Saturday, we had a good breakfast and all went to New Brighton Beach to let the kids play. We'd bought Abbi some duck trainers to fetch from the water, since we have a little Michael Phelps on our hands now. I don't know why they're called duck trainers when they're bright orange, cylindrical things, that look nothing like a duck! She was doing really well out in the ocean; swimming out to the trainer and letting the tide bring her back in. Until a wave rocked her...we saw little Abbi bottom, Abbi head, Abbi bottom, and then her head popped back out of the wave. Poor little girl!! She wouldn't go back in the water after that. I'm hoping she'll forget about this experience the next time we take her to the water.





















Josh had prepared some tri-tip for dinner that night, so as we're trucking that, along with our chairs, potato salad, and the dogs to the Aldama campsite, along comes the ranger. She tells us that we have to have the identification paperwork to go along with the placard and if we can't produce it, that we'll have to vacate the campsite. Darn. But as a "favor" to us, she gave us two hours to vacate AND, here's the generous part, she'll let us park a third vehicle in a campsite for one night without penalties. Ooooooo, thank you so much stupid ranger lady! We got everything moved and set up again in the Aldama site in a short amount of time, so it wasn't that bad. And we were only staying for one more night. I guess that's what we get though for trying to break the rules, and the law. :(

We broke camp the next day but before we left, we hit the O'Neill store in Capitola. Wow. Two stories and I could've spent so much money there. We cut ourselves off though after only two sweatshirts.

We had a great time camping, aside from the little snafu and loved spending time with the family. Noelle and Corom are getting so big and they're a blast!! We were thisclose to getting Noelle to feed the dogs from her hand. Next time, Gadget! Next time!!