I've set a goal for myself to finish up our camping trips/Oregon Adventure by the end of this year.
I guess I like to stress myself out about random deadlines for no apparent reason.
But we've been home for 18 months now, and "KuWAIT for it" needs to finish up already.
So as we were rounding out our time in Kuwait, Dave began to plan a mini "tour of Oregon"...=). It was fun watching him select places and zoom into campsites online to find the best ones. He pointed out that we'd shown our kids several other places around the world, but not the state they were born in. It became a nice little bookend to our Kuwait Adventure, and, it was a nice way to kill some time while we were waiting to sort out our housing situation and readjusting to life back home.
He crafted a trip that included a few days of camping followed by a stay in a hotel so that we could do laundry and get really good showers and such. All in all it was ten days and six stops.
Heading out on The Great Family Road Trip...
Not only was it our first "adventure" since returning to the states, but it was the inaugural Road Trip for our new (to us) van!
We'd purchased our 2005 Toyota Sienna like five days before we packed it full of our crap and drove it around the state.
(It's funny because it's the same year as the van we sold when we moved to Kuwait! But, it only had 53K miles on it when we bought it and it had everything else we wanted so we decided not to care about how old it was. Dave and I are super boring when it comes to cars...we hate car payments, we love low miles so we can drive the same cars for YEARS. I love the Sienna as it has fold down seats! Our old van was a Dodge Caravan and while the third row was removable, it was super heavy and a pain in the ass every time we (and by "we" I of course mean "David" because feminism is complicated) had to remove it. We were ready for our next van to have stow-and-go options! And yes, we bought another minivan. I freaking LOVE having a minivan! I'll probably still drive one even after our kids move out! The best part about driving a minivan is the looks you get when you bump rap music at high volumes while driving one. I'm a soccer mom in a lot of ways, but I will never stop listening to Wu Tang Clan...)
I digress.
We loaded up from my sister's house in Portland and made our way to Beverly Beach. We pulled off the highway at one view point to get out and look around at the incredible scenery...
You guys!! Oregon is SO BEAUTIFUL!!
We arrived at Beverly Beach and found the great spot that David had reserved for us. He and I set to getting the tents up because we're adults and the twins set to climbing and exploring because they're kids...
Hot dogs cooked over a campfire...All American dinner right there...
The kids made themselves at home playing around our site...
…and Dave got to work on his fire-poking stick...
...and he did such a good job that we ended up taking it along with us to all our sites, and it sits in our garage currently with the rest of our camping supplies =)
The twins made friends with some neighboring kids and spent a lot of this trip playing around the area with their new buddies, which was a new stage of life for us. Several times David and I found ourselves sitting quietly reading while our kids played happily with friends nearby...camping had never looked like that before!
We also spent an entire afternoon one of those days playing on the beach.
Such a beautiful place to camp near!
We did some exploring...
..we went on one of the campground hikes...
It felt really good to be spending so much time OUTSIDE. There were many, many blessings about living in Kuwait and I will always be grateful we did... but one of the things that weighed on me was how little time our kids spent playing outdoors during our time there. I've just seen so much research on how healthy it is for young kids to get unstructured, uninhibited time in nature...it's really great for their development! And while they received countless benefits from being expats in the Middle East for two years, I found myself giving thanks for all the playing-in-nature that occurred while camping.
Not to mention the life skills, like Dave teaching them the *art* of keeping a good fire going...=)
The Beverly Beach part of our trip was a lot of fun, beautiful scenery, and relaxation.
After two nights in Beverly Beach, we packed up camp and headed to our next destination!
Road Trip stop #1 complete =)
