Our First Camping Trip

Kate and I both really like to camp and, wonderfully enough, we were given camping gear from my family (and from my wife to me and vise versa) for Christmas, so we decided to finally go camping.

We decided on Big Basin Redwoods State Park. It is a really pretty area south of the Bay Area, covered in Redwoods, nestled in deep canyons with contrasting rolling green hills. It really was quite nice. The drive out there, however, wasn't as much fun. It took longer than anticipated and by the time we arrived, it was pitch black... especially deep in the woods. We struggled at first to find an open campsite, venturing into the center of the park, only to find that the only available and open sites were back where we came from.

We made our way back and, after finding a nice place to park ourselves, began setting up our tent with visual assistance from our headlamps. It was fairly simple and didn't take much time at all. The next big feat was the fire. It got pretty chilly and we wanted to be warm. We also wanted to eat! We scavenged for wood scraps and after a bit of struggle, were able to get a nice glowing fire. We prepared our foil dinners and were eating a few s'mores while they were cooking when we heard a quick rustle behind us. I had heard a few kids walking around just seconds before and assumed they were theiving our food, but when I turned around I was met by two beady yellow eyes. stared at each other for a split second and the little raccoon, so meticulously disguised as a burglar, darted off with our stash of Hershey's chocolate bars. It was a hoot!

I gathered my courage, flipped open my pocket knife (just in case) and chased after him, only to find him nestled in a dense barrage of bushes, porking away at our chocolate bars. By the time I had reached him, he had already finished a whole bar and was working on his second. Fortunately, in his hasty retreat, he dropped a couple of chocolate bars on the ground by our table and we were able to use those to feed our craving for s'mores.

After finishing our foil dinners, which were quite tasty I might add, we prepped for bed, curled up in our sleeping bags, and dozed off to sleep. Katie slept fairly well. I, on the other hand, did not. My feet were cold the entire night and thus I was unable to sleep, but when morning broke, I was enthused and ready to build another fire. This time, it wasn't so easy. I scavenged for wood (traveling, by car, to the ranger station to buy a bundle of chopped logs) and worked for a good 20 minutes to get a fire going, only to realize later that I could use the oil (that we later burned b/c it was cool) to get the fire started. Duh...

When the fire was a'blazin, we made tasty donuts using the wonderful method I learned in Boy Scouts... store bought biscuit dough. We were happy with our little breakfast. We cleaned and then took lots of fun pictures. (You can see our album here!) Exhausted, but enthused and happily smelling like campfire, we headed home to our nice hot shower and comfy warm bed. We can't wait for our next campout!