Tent Camping with Kids

It was going to be our first camping trip with tents and the kids, which made it our first camping trip since Cass was born in 2016, which made it our first camping trip since our North Coast Caper in 2015.

I got Corrie a new tent for Christmas, a "family sized" tent, and this was our first time taking it out. She has very detailed prep lists, which neither of us remembered being there until we perused the camping gear.

She'd made the reservations back in January, and found a spot at San Simeon, just north of Cambria, just up the coast from Morro Bay and Cayucos, in the very near vicinity to our college era haunts in San Luis Obispo. We were only going to out there for two nights, leaving noontime on Friday, and heading back to the Southland Sunday afternoon (always a dicey decision because of traffic).

How would the kids do sleeping in a tent for two nights? And how would they react to the rain that turned out to be on the schedule? 

Wait, rain? We'd never camped in rain before. Once we camped in Sequoia Park a few minutes down the mountain from the snowline, but it wasn't actively snowing, and that experience was the worst weather in our many camping adventures.

We had a friend with us, and found a cool spot under a tree:

Ours is the red and grey tent on the left above. Rain was on the forecast, and by the time we were up in the twilight hours of 6 pm on Friday---enough light to get everything set up but enough cloud cover to speak to the accuracy of the rain estimate---that 86% number looked legit.

Hopefully it wouldn't be too hard...and that our tent could handle it...and that the kids would also handle it...

The rain started lightly in the dark hours of the early morning on Saturday, and until the lunchtime hours remained just that: sporadic drizzle. It was fully manageable and didn't hamper any activities.

It may have changed activities, like having to use the propane stove under the open back-hatch of Corrie's Suburu, using the trunk space as a table. But that was fun! Everyone got pancakes and those of us who wanted bacon got that too.

We soon went for a hike and followed a trail that hugged the road in:

Cass followed our friend Lauren and her two dogs pretty closely, even holding the leash of the older, more mature dog for as long as he could. Camille brought up the rear with either me or Corrie, who above was showing off her coffee as she snapped a pic of the trail.

The trail itself lead all the way to the ocean, and Camille ran up to Cass and me as I was explaining seaweed holdfasts:

Another awesome photo from Corrie...

After a while the sun burned off the clouds, and I returned to the trail to take a picture of the view that was mostly obscured hours before by a combo of marine layer and rain clouds:

Some of the trees had both climbing ivy and Spanish moss, and I liked the way they looked:

It was so good to get back out into nature and sleep outside, and it was maybe surprising to see how well our two kids did, but they freaking loved it. We got to eat breakfast with our good friend Ryan back in San Luis on Sunday morning before heading back to Long Beach. Seeing Ryan was very refreshing and fun, as always, and even the drive wasn't so bad. Maybe being Easter Sunday itself made the traffic light, but who cares! We got home just after 2 pm, which is borderline miraculous taking into account of leaving SLO right before 11.

It was a wonderful experiment (trying the kids out in a tent) and a wonderful weekend.