It's Summer Vacation...Let's Go Camping!

We've purposely not over booked our time this summer as we typically do to allow for; a bit more spotaneity with our time, getting a home project or two done and to just be home to enjoy the leisure life that we rarely have during the school year.

This leisureness allowed for a last minute "Why not take our niece & nephew camping" adventure. Ally & Spencer had never really been camping. T was in the mood for some sunshine that could be found according to the weatherchannel.com on the eastern side of the state. And G loves to plain be in the wildnerness.

In addition to checking the weather forecast we also researched a camp ground that might fit the requirements for this trip: 1) Must be on the East side where the sun and warmth were forecasted to be. 2) Must be tolerable for 2 children who have never been camping before. 3) Must be within 30 minutes of a restaurant we both love (Okay, so that's somewhat a joke but sadly also somewhat NOT!)

We settled on Lewis & Clark Trail State Park 25 miles north of Walla Walla. It's not a secret that we love Walla Walla and most of the wine that comes from Walla Walla but this was a camping trip and a camping trip with our beloved ones under the age of 21 so although wine tasting would be in bad taste we decided a good restaurant would not be.

We packed up ourselves, picked up Ally & Spencer

and headed East of the mountains in search of sunshine.

We were all watching the temperature gauge carefully as we passed over the mountains heading into Yakima where we had lunch at 80+ degrees and were so happy when we reached the state park

and it the themometer read 92 degrees.

As planned camping midweek we were able to have our first pick of the  26 camping sites available. We were all happy to set up camp

and get out of the truck. A good 4 and a half hours in the car was pleanty for us all. We got the tent up and then it started to rain. And now it was 92 degrees and raining which meant hot & humid. Oh my!

Which made us even more happy to finally get all set up and finally relax.
Finally the rain stopped and we were able to get comfortable and enjoy our beautiful surroundings.

We did the ususual camping things: a camp fire, stories and smore's the first night.
The next day was about the small river we camped alongside.

For G & Spencer that meant fishing.

For Ally & I that meant trying to soak up a little sunshine.

None of us were super successful in our endeavors: the temperature on our second day hovered around 75 degrees with lots of wind and clouds and the fish were very small.

But that gave us more time for our favorite family game: Uno. Which Uncle G seems to always to dominate.

We gave up the fishing adventure and instead found a park to have a picnic lunch at

It was time to get cleaned up and head to Waitsburg to enjoy a dinner again at The Whoop'em Up Hollow Cafe.

We had been looking forward to revisiting this little gem of a restaurant for a second time.

Waitsburg is a cute little town.

With a hardware store,

a great out of place bar called the JimGerman Bar that we didn't visit this visit obviously

but  also a few new up & coming new businesses as well that we look forward to visiting next trip.We all enjoyed the Whoop'em Up (more about our dinner in our next posting.)

We enjoyed our dinner and headed back for the next rounds of Uno and Bananagrams by the campfire.

Our camping trip was successful in that we got outta town with two of the people we love to be with more than in anyone in the whole wide world. And we got to show them part of the state they hadn't yet experienced. 

We look forward to our next adventure with them. Weather doesn't really matter when spending time with the ones you love.