Monaloca

Last weekend we took our first family camping trip along with two other families. Joey hadn’t been super thrilled about the idea, and less so when we realized I somehow managed to book it for his birthday weekend. (It was the one time that worked for everyone.) But he hadn’t realized that sometimes camping is really just hanging out, drinking, eating, and playing in the forest with friends. And we had plenty of all of that for a day and a half.

The three highlights for me were being surrounded by redwoods, spending quality time with good friends, and all the delicious food we managed to cook over an open fire. And by “we” I really mean our friends, who were so eager to camp cook that Joey and I ended up just bringing lunch fixings. We also drank. James home-brewed Joey (and really, the rest of us) a birthday ale just for the trip. I hear he was trying to copy Red Spot from Jupiter. It was tasty and smooth, and much to his surprise we managed to polish it off before the end of the second night.

Dinner menus went something like this. Night one: fresh baguettes and delicious cheeses from the Cheeseboard, followed by steak and seasoned shrimp skewers grilled over the open fire. Fire-warmed berry cobbler and s’mores for dessert. Night two: fire-roasted baguette slices topped with fire-warmed goat cheese and spicy olive tapanade as a starter. Marinated chicken thighs cooked over the grill alongside potato cakes, and served with arugula salad. Homemade birthday brownies for Joey – and more s’mores – for dessert. And the breakfasts were just as good.

All four girls seemed to have a blast, but outside marshmallow roasting I’m not sure how much food played a part. The older girls played in a pup “play” tent, colored on a table-top-like redwood stump, and visited a nearby creek. Nalani, well, she just explored our campsite, tried to join in the big girl fun, and got covered in dirt. Since there was only one toddler and only two real dangers (the biggest being the fire, the other being the not-so-traveled camp road at the far end of our site) it wasn’t too big of a deal to keep her safe. The four- and five-year olds also helped.

We’d had to gear up a little before the adventure began. We bought a tent meant for six (in reality it fits two adults and two small children fine, but adding Kai would have been a squeeze.) The kids helped me set it up in our backyard the weekend before, so we knew what we were doing but somehow in taking it down we managed to lose two stakes.

For Nalani at night we brought the princess sleep tent Melina used in Portugal, meaning she was snug and sound in a tent inside a tent. Our little girl went down beautifully both nights as soon as we saw she was tired. And she slept beautifully both nights until exactly 2am, when she, right next to us, started to grumble, tried to get comfortable, couldn’t, and then devolved into a screaming fit that lasted at least 45 minutes. Both nights. As one of Melina’s preschool teachers joked when she heard the story, “Nalani, you woke up all of Sherwood forest!”

Early morning screaming fits aside, even Joey agreed it was tons of fun and will be even better next year when our littlest girl is a little bit bigger. Rachel and Zac are on board for take two, so now we just need to see if we can talk Tracee, our other hesitant camper, into it!

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