White River Camping

We wanted to camp more this year but it just didn’t work out. The kids and I did manage one trip with Gma Marie to Mount Hood again along with the cousins and a ton more of the GmaM side of the family. The kids were excited to go and could hardly wait for the vehicles to stop moving before they jumped out and headed into the woods.Sounded like we might not have gotten “our” camping spot if it was not for the rest of the families help again this year. Another small group had set up camp in this one spot but after chatting with our family they decided to move to another area on the mountain.
I think it went something like this.
Other Family: We have three or four more people coming tonight for the weekend.
My Family: Great, we have another thirty to forty people coming tonight for the weekend too.
(An hour or so later)
Other Family: (driving out with all their stuff) You might want to pull a vehicle into the spot to save it. We’re going to find a little quieter spot for the weekend. Have fun.
My Family: Ok, thanks, we’ll do that.
Thanks to our family for parking the truck to save us a great camp sight! Like they do for us every year. And to the “Other Family” I hope you had a quiet weekend and a good time.Gma was the first up every morning and started a fire. Cole found the fire building quite interesting and was the second one out of the tent to join her. (Cole is the last one up at home, every day…and I mean every day) Gma was great, fire going and water on the stove for hot cocoa every morning for anyone who wanted it!

Jo was one of the last ones out of bed each morning. See these cloths? The only thing that was changed during four days of camping was underwear. I believe that goes for all of us really, not just the kids. Oh well. Hey, we did brush our teeth and run a brush through our hair too.

As you may have noticed, we were bundled up most of the time. It was down right cold up there this year. Sunny on Friday and warm enough for the kids to play in the water and swim a bit but then the wind blew in from the mountain top and chilled us all to the bone. I didn’t take many photos, about the only thing I thought of was “what else can I do to warm up?”

We did make the trip up to see my Grandparents at the old family campsite; the kids get to ride in the back of the pick up bed for this and they like that a lot. It’s a bumpy ride up and down hills and through some tight spots. They took Crater Lake rocks to leave at their head stones; I think my Grandma & Grandpa would like that.

We also took part in Geocaching with the family. It was our first time treasure hunting and we had a blast. Oh, it was cold and that part was not fun but hunting for a little box in the woods was really fun! We might do this in the future for ourselves. Neat!

Last photo and end of this post because I still need to clean the van, do more wash and clean up the camping gear.This is what the kids looked like sleeping the last night. Blankets, sleeping bags, blanket on top, warm pj’s with heavy socks and snow hats to top off the bedtime gear! Did I say it was cold this year?