Of course the one time I decide to actually film our time at the beach this summer was also the time it rained the most. Even though the skies were gray and threatening rain, it was actually perfect weather for camping, and for once it wasn’t boiling hot.
Music: Summer Mood, by Best Coast
They would have been married 40 years today. Wait, can that be right?
I never was the type of girl that dreamed of dressing up like a princess at her wedding, but I did always dream of wearing a mini dress with sparkly silver shoes just like my mom.
Happy Anniversary Mom. And Dad, I’m guessing you’re eating shrimp tempura in some alternate universe to celebrate.
Another weekend, another beach. Can you tell that we were beach-starved last year and making up for lost time? Having lived in Northern California for so long, the idea that one can be warm at the beach is pretty amazing. I still find myself packing layers and sweatshirts expecting the weather to shift and turn my “warm” beach day (warm being like upper 60s) into a cold, foggy, gray day. We were kind of praying for those NorCal beach days because it was so hot the weekend we went to Cape Henlopen State Park. It was so hot that I would find Sly sitting in the car “warming it up” for half an hour just so he could get a bit of A/C. It was so hot that I swear the plastic band on my purse started to melt.
Last year we learned that, like camping in California, the best spots during peak seasons book up quickly. It’s a bit easier to find campsites out here – I don’t think I have ever had to log in at exactly 10am, seven months to the date I wanted to visit the campground, only to have the site already be booked. It’s not on that level of difficult, but it still requires advanced planning.
After years of backpacking, ultra-lite camping, and cramming into a tiny pod tent, we finally decided to buy a new tent for our upcoming car camping trips. We felt we had pretty much earned the right to a massive three-room tent with a screen room/”front porch,” complete with a real door (like one that opens on a hinge). We call it our “tent-home” and it’s easily the largest tent we’ve seen at any campsite ever. It’s pretty amazing.
I think one of the things that drew me to camping as a little one was all the cool camping gear you could find. Even way back then I was obsessed with the idea of portable stoves, folding swiss army knives, and dutch ovens. We have been backpacking or ultralight camping the past couple of years, but we plan on doing quite a bit of “glamping” this summer. My mind has been spinning with all the innovations in tent ‘condos’ and ‘camp kitchens’. I can’t wait to head to my local outdoors store and spend hours looking at and testing out all the new gear! Hurry up summer!
With Memorial Day around the corner, that means only one thing: camping! We will camp in any weather, but it’s especially wonderful when the weather is warm and we can go on long hikes, discover private swimming holes and of course, cook outside. We camped nearly every weekend when we were living in San Francisco, and one thing I learned from camping out there was make your reservations early. There’s no such thing as a spontaneous road / camping trip in SF – at least not to the coveted camping spots. We’re talking six months to the date at exactly 10am or you will have to wait another year to get your campsite. Summer camping in the DC area is a little different. There’s definitely planning and advance reserving involved (as we discovered when trying to book summer camping last year), but it seems just a tiny bit more relaxed. I’m really looking forward to camping near secluded (hopefully warm) beaches this year – something you don’t quite get to experience on the Pacific Coast.
Sly and I have been meaning to take cherry blossom photos since last year, it just never seemed to happen. Last year, it was freezing, then we had guests in town, then we just forgot about it. This year, due to all the warm weather, the cherry blossoms bloomed early.
We were a little worried that there wouldn’t be any blossoms, and the weather was looking kind of iffy, but finally by late afternoon, we dragged ourselves to the Tidal Basin. At first we were beginning to wonder if we made the right decision – we didn’t see hardly any cherry blossoms, and what ones we did were located in random bits of grass on concrete islands in between busy roads or beside the highway. At every cropping of blossom trees we saw just hoards of tourists taking photos. After circling the area about a million times, we started to wonder if we made the right decision.
A couple months ago, we came to this same are to check out the Solar Decathalon and had a similar experience in dealing w/the crowds and finding parking (typical weekend in that part of town). The upside of that experience was that we knew a few ‘secret’ spots to find parking. So after our millionth loop, we headed in that direction, found parking immediately, and then wandered around for a little bit before we discovered a beautiful grove of blossoms with not a single tourist or photographer. It was such a magical and beautiful place that we named our “secret grove.”
We took a family camping trip this past weekend to Fairy Stone State Park to celebrate Sly’s bday early with his family. It rained (and hailed) all weekend, and supposedly some fellow campers spotted a tornado. I wasn’t too worried about the weather (we had tornado watches like every other day growing up in Texas) — it allowed us an opportunity to build a fire and spend most of our days and nights cooking, eating, chatting, and playing with our nephews.
Fairy Stone Park is named after the special sorts of rocks that can be found nearby. Scientifically, these geometric cross-shaped rocks are known as Staurolite crystals but legend has it that the rocks are a result of fairy tears when they heard about the death of Christ. Supposedly these rocks protect against witchcraft (?), sickness, accidents and disaster.
