a camping we will go

 

Little Miss J has been asking to go camping since this summer. Too much watching Max and Ruby and the Bunny Scouts, I suspect. I saw this quote on someone's Facebook page a few months back and it pretty much hit the nail on the head.

 And to be completely honest, it's not the money that is the problem. It is the sheer amount of effort it takes to plan a trip to live like a homeless person. It's not like I don't love a good campfire, it's simply that it seems like a waste to spend all that time putting up a tent for one or two nights. And trust me, if Gus and I are going to take a week off of work, we probably are not going camping. Despite camping A LOT as kids, neither one of us are particularly seasoned campers nor have we ever desired to be.

Cue Basecamp Hotel in South Lake Tahoe. We took the kids camping Chunglund style.

there was a tent

and a campfire

 

and s'mores

and hiking

and nature

strategically taken selfies

look at all this nature!

Little Miss J had a fun time, but I will admit that after about the fifth time each of them work up (and these were not concurrent awakenings), I was about to pull a Lenartz and pack it up and head home in the middle of the night. But we stuck it out and on Sunday went to the Taylor Creek Visitor center for a little hiking walking.

We saw salmon spawning at Taylor Creek, which meant (1) an obscene amount of fish swimming around in a rather small area and (2) an obscene amount of dead fish floating around being eaten by ducks. Circle of life people. It ain't pretty. I had to explain to Gus that the fish were dead and not actually "sleeping."

Moral of the story? I can barely handle the great indoors, let alone the great outdoors, with two kids.