July 4th Camp Out

In one of the most unconstitutional acts of the century, my city outlawed fireworks. I, as an American citizen, am no longer able to decide if I would like to shoot off fireworks to celebrate my freedoms and country. As you can tell, I feel very bitter about this and so we decided that if we couldn't celebrate with fireworks, that we would leave and enjoy some great outdoors over the holiday instead.

So in rebellion, we left and set up camp at American Heritage Campground in Olympia and settled in.

I was nervous about Ivy staying warm or sleeping well in the tent, but she did fantastic. And she loved climbing out of her bed to snuggle with me in my sleeping bag each morning. The other kids kept cozy on their side of the tent.

My parents and sister were camped across the way and we set up home base around their fire pit. Trying to keep a crawling baby clean while camping proved a difficult, if not impossible, task. Ivy did love the camping chairs and playing in the dirt as much as possible.

We tried to keep her contained in a pack-n-play, but she really hated it. She wanted to be free!

Our first full day, we left to explore a couple of hikes in the area. We found one that led us to a couple of discovery zones along the Puget Sound. We saw seals, gooey ducts, and also an old bridge thing that now houses a bunch of bats.

The hike also leads you to a bird refuge of sorts. So many birds line the trees that the ground in the surrounding area is white with their excrement.

They feed on the fish that the Puget Sound brings in the bay. I tried to get a video of how loud the birds are all squawking together, but it's hard to tell from the video. It sounded like a symphony of creepiness. We also found a plant with red and blue - fitting for our holiday weekend.

On our way back, we took a small detour to extend our hike to see some extra nature things.

This proved to be disastrous for me as Kendrick lost all motivation a part of the way through and I ended up dragging him for a VERY long time trying to get out of the endless forest. I even started singing, "this is the trail that never ends. It goes on and on my friends." Kendrick refused to look at the camera for a picture he was so grumpy.

One of the kids' favorites was the campground pool. A couple of the days were cold and windy, but they were not deterred and often had the pool to themselves.

Another favorite was the nightly hay rides touring the campground.

Basically, the tractor pulls you around the campground and you wave at all the campers as you go by.

Scooter and roller blade races brought out some heavy competition one evening, and Ivy put holes in the knees of her pants trying to keep up.

Mom became the goat whisperer at the animal farm as we tried to call the goats out of the barn so we could look at them. The goat loved to maaaa at the disturbing sounds coming out of Mom's mouth. We finished up daylight with some scramball before heading for our campfire.

We heard the fireworks that night, but we enjoyed the flickering lights of our campfire and each other's company more.

The next morning we took another hike around Tumwater falls. This one was more low-key and stroller friendly.

The falls are big and beautiful and we walked down to the very bottom to fully enjoy them.

Ivy enjoyed the hike around the falls too.

We cleaned up camp and enjoyed our final bit of time together before we headed home.

Ivy looked a little hammered our final morning waking up.

We stopped to visit the State Capitol Building since we were in town.

The kids ran around like wild people being all sorts of disrespectful while we looked at the monuments and enjoyed the fountains.

After enjoying the grounds we explored the inside of the building.

And then we rushed home to beat the holiday traffic.

Our campout was great. The two negatives were that Brigham had to spend most of our trip studying for his Certified Financial Planning test he was about to take. And the only bathrooms in the tent section of the campground were these horrible, terrible porta-potties. And those things also got real full real fast with all the campers having to share them. The flush toilets and running water promised were a ten-minute walk away in the RV section of the campground. We visited them when we could, but that is way too long of a trek in the middle of the night. Oh, it was a gross, terrible situation.

Besides those two issues, we had a great time. Camping food, tent snuggles, campfires, games, hikes, and good company. Everything a girl could want for her birthday weekend.