Larrabee State Park | Hide and Seek Paradise
I'd like to thoroughly hash out my feelings regarding travel and kids and camping and how I love it so much, SO MUCH, and yet how tired I get and how angsty the kids get because they miss their friends and sometimes they wet their sleeping beds and YET they have so much fun playing outside chasing each other up and down trails and yelling "bombs away" and then how we read bedtime books in the tent and fall asleep together breathing fresh air and looking up at the stars if it isn't raining and I just don't want to be anywhere else at all BUT we miss daddy and get tired of eating out of the car and sometimes I feel like I'm running away from something but I just don't know what it is and sometimes I don't care I just want to get back out there and drink in the beauty of nature and forget about life and its complications.
Sometimes run-on sentences feel REALLY GOOD.
The bottom line, what I've decided, what I'm going to aim for in the future, is BALANCE. Hah! Right? Because we weren't just waiting ALL winter for the weather to be compatible with tent camping. And we wouldn't try to cram 20 adventures into 12 weekends of summer. No, not at all. In the future ---- ready for it? ---- we need to invest time in resting-at-home weekends. Truly. Sadly. Necessarily.
It might look like this:
Weekend 1 -- two nights at Lake Chelan with our kayaks and fun family
Weekend 2 -- home for tacos with friends and harvesting berries and tomatoes and basil and making pesto and mowing the pesky grass
Weekend 3 -- three nights in the San Juan islands with our bikes and boats
Weekend 4 -- home for backyard campfires and ginger beer floats and floating local rivers and family bike rides with the neighbors
Weekend 5 -- two nights in the Columbia Gorge with hikes to Gorton Falls and Oneonta Gorge with friends
Weekend 6 -- home to freeze a peach harvest and several dozen cobs of corn and to make tamales and salsa
The home weekends look fun too. They do. But I'm not going to promise we won't do some adventuring away from home during the week...if the spirit moves. But I'll try to keep it in check. Why does getting out of dodge appeal to me so so so so much? It might be a syndrome.
Trip Details:
Larrabee State Park -- which has more to offer than we could even begin to explore. I'd love to come back and hike to Fragrance Lake. And next time I'll bring my husband and our kayaks. The coastline here and little nearby islands would be perfect to explore from a boat. The campground is FAB-u-lous, with many many trails and big trees and undergrowth and jumping off and climbing spots. It was hide and seek heaven for the kids. The showers weren't anything special, but they were THERE {which turned out to be a lifesaver!} and free. We'd go back here in a heartbeat. Did you notice the view across Samish Bay toward the San Juan Islands? Nice, right? Kinda makes me happy.