Camping with Family

  I just got back yesterday evening from a camping trip with the Kangs, Arnetts, and Veatches.  We stayed at the Gales Creek Campground in the Tillamook National Forest. The kids spent a lot of time playing in the creek and had a great time together. It was fun just watching the grandkids enjoy each other's company.  Unfortunately Gales Creek is seriously lacking in agates and other interesting rocks. Therefore the kids spent a lot of time building dams and moving the rocks around.

This little rock dam is about three inches higher than it was when we arrived.

Luna was able to find a cool heart shaped rock

Autumn, Anthony, and Oreo enjoy time at the creek

   We took a nice day hike on Tuesday morning.  The smaller children hiked about 4 miles on Gales Creek Trail while Aunt Rachel led the older children on a longer 6 mile hike. They were pretty good little hikers for the most part. There were a relatively small number of "Can we go back now?" comments which surprisingly did not come from the smallest children.

Natalie, Rachel, and Sarah on Gales Creek Trail. 

   We enjoyed lots of quality time around the campfire, sang songs, and ate well.  We listened to Sofie play her fiddle, Uncle Mike on his penny whistle, and lots of picking away on Grandma Linda's new Ukelele. It was fun when I was hiking on Tuesday morning to hear little Lilly singing a song she had learned at the Monday evening camp fire. The older children prepared some lovely blueberry dutch oven desserts each evening.  Aunt Rachel got fancy for breakfast one morning and poached some eggs in a half bell pepper. Note in the photo below that it is rosemary on the poached egg and not the usual "scout pepper" sort of debris that often ends up seasoning food when camping with children. Uncle Mike gave rides on a little trailer contraption he had made to pull behind his mountain bike.  He got a serious workout by the time all of the younger kids had been given multiple rides around the campground.

Natalie is obviously enjoying the ride. 

Luna with a big helping of Dutch Oven Blueberry Delight

Poached Egg  ala Rachel.

    We finished off our outing with a trip to Tillamook on Wednesday. We had a great time on the tour of the cheese factory, bought some cheese, ate some wonderful ice cream, and then headed for the beach at Oceanside. Among other wonders, the beach had what Gales Creek lacked, namely lots of agates. The beach also had some nasty little transparent arthropods that Sofie aptly dubbed "annoying little bitey things". I'm curious as to what they are as I'd not noticed them before. In spite of the little biters a great time was had by all.

From left to right, Lilly the Cow, Madelynn, Chloe, Anthony the Farmer, Elise, and Hannah