Camping at the Beach
At the very tail end of summer vacation, we managed to squeeze a quick camping trip out to the KOA outside of Astoria, right across the road from Ft. Stevens State Park. So many things didn’t go as planned, we lived a comedy of errors.
Here we are trying to put up my big tent:
Even though we’d practiced this in Portland, somehow we were incapable of assembling it on-site and ended up breaking two tent poles before we gave up. I slept in the back of the truck instead. Both our inflatable mattresses weren’t holding air so no padding. We all had sore bones.
Here’s the thing: it had been so scorching hot in Portland that none of the three of us thought much about cooler weather clothes, and sure enough it was nearly 30 degrees cooler at the beach. We didn’t freeze completely, but we were a little chilly.
Chloe had fun making s’mores over the fire. One thing we didn’t screw up was the food, we got that right. Except for the part where I forgot about the raccoons. They woke Lisa up three times the last night ransacking our camp. I didn’t think to secure my groceries and they made off with a loaf of bread.
At least Lisa and Chloe had better luck with their tent.
The KOA is chock-full of kid activities. An indoor pool, and outdoor pool, game room, mini-golf, movies, bikes other outdoor games and this thing that Chloe’s on. It’s a gigantic jumping pad that usually had 6-10 kids bouncing up and down on it at any time.
We did have a nice time at the beach.
That’s Lisa and Chloe way out there by the surf.
Chloe loves her crabs.
And she loves rolling in the warm sand.
In the end, despite all the things that went wrong we had a good time after all and most importantly, Chloe says she enjoyed it. That’s what we were shooting for.