Cancelled COVID Camping

Hiking backpack (check), camping shirt (check), kid’s hiking book (check), s’mores makings (check), diapers and wipes for baby brother (check), reservations (check?).

I booked camp spots before covid hit (because in Western Washington there are more campers than spots so you have to reserve your whole summer in the winter). If I remember right we couldn’t make it to most of them because the parks were closed for a while but for this one I received a reminder about my reservation the week before so thought I was good. What I missed was the email stating half the campground was closed… including the site I’d reserved. So we packed up, and so did my older brother and his family, and headed for the campsite Friday evening, only to discover we were a couple hours from home with no reservation.

Sometimes you just have to sit in the mud and enjoy it.

Thankfully there were a couple spots at the next camp spot away at Birch Bay State Park, though only for one night instead of two. we quickly set up camp as it got dark.

Eating uncooked s’mores since there was too much water in our fire pit. No one could complain with a mouth full of marsh mellows.

Fitting two adults and two year old in a small SUV is not too recommended.. they got a camper van (sprinter) shortly after this.

The only way we fit our family camping gear in our cross trek with two car seats.

It was a great short trip but I’m not going to lie… a little depressing to pack so many things up after only one night, knowing we’d have to put it all away. But mostly I just counted us as lucky to not just have to turn back home and unpack the night before!

Thankfully my brother invited us to have the fire pit portion of camping on his roof top deck. This turned out especially great that we could invite my younger brother too (who hadn’t been able to get away for the weekend) and duck out of the rain and hail into the green house in between marshmallows.