Time to Camp!

Once again it's time to load up and head out to one of our favorite camping places. Iron Creek Campground on the Cispus River in Randle, WA.

My husband was very kind to help haul the kids, my dog Tinsel and myself up to our campsite on Thursday night where he helped set up a bit and then had to make the trek home because he had to work the next day.

The kids and I had a great first night together and I woke up to hear all 4 of them playing UNO in the trailer.

We all got up, made up breakfast and a campfire then went down to check out the river and ride bikes and walk through the campground, and then sit around and read for a bit.

One of the new recipes I tried was roasted vegetable salad from our latest issue of Sunset Magazine. I really like this one and will make it again.

On Saturday, my husband came back out to join us in the morning and behind him was my aunt and uncle to spend the day with us! My parents had come out Friday afternoon with my 4 nieces and stayed in the site across from us. Here are 4 of the girls with my Aunt. Just before my husband arrived, my dad, Little J and I took a little hike with the dogs. On the way back I asked Little J " Where are you going to sleep tonight?" (He'd been sleeping in the bed with me while my husband was gone.) Little J said " In the trailer - with you - on da BIG bed." I asked "Where will Daddy sleep then?" Little J replied " Outside. In da dirt." Nice considering he'd cried the whole first evening saying " I miss my dad. I want to go to my house. You want to go to our house now Mom?"

Tater and Chelan came out with my husband too. Here's Chelan retrieving dummies in the river.

We had blue skies the ENTIRE time which is rare for us and it got up into the 80's so, warm enough to swim in the river. The kids made a dam so the little ones could safely stay out of the current.

Here's another one of the recipes I tried from Sunset Magazine this time. Dutch Oven roast and vegetables. Took about 3 hours to cook. We had a terrific time and did all the usual camping activities, fishing, walking trails, card games, S'mores, stories around the fire and playing in the natural playground God gave us.

Autumn's Book of Camping Rules...

... Has been thrown out the window. This is me when I was little, out on a family trip. I have this problem where I like everything to be like it was when I was little. I had a great childhood so why not try to replicate it??? Our family would go camping often. A lot of the times we'd share a campsite with many family members either on my dad's side of the family or my mom's side. It was great. Perfect. Even if it rained most of the time - it was always so much fun! Along the way, without realising it, I developed ideas of what camping should be and what kinds of things did not qualify as 'camping'. When I was a kid our family camping trips would go like this : Pile everything we would need into our station wagon, lock the house and go out to the campground which was usually in the woods next to either the bay, ocean or some river. Once at the campground, choose a secluded, family friendly site, park the car and set up. Once set up, we never entered the car again until the camping trip was over and it was time to head home. We didn't leave the campground. We were there to CAMP, not drop our stuff and explore the country. Us kids would make little forts out of the old stumps and trees around our site while the adults would work on fixing up camp food. If we left our camp site it was by foot only and it was to follow a trail down to the water source to fish or look for shells. I have lots of memories of catching bull heads, putting them in a coffee can with water and getting to 'keep' them until we had to let them go before going home. I have lots of memories of wearing my saltwater sandals and trying not to cut my feet on barnacles which were all over the beach. We ALWAYS camped in the deep dark woods and never could we see any other campers that might have also been camping in the same campground. We were very secluded and private. It was family time. Time to sit around the campfire and listen to Dad tell us stories from his boy scouts trips, listen to Uncle David tell us ghost stories or just talk. Roast marshmallows, hot dogs and then go to bed in our tent. Never were any showers taken or expected to be taken. There weren't any showers or bathrooms with lights or flush toilets. Only the fly infested dark outhouse with the deep hole to sit on top of which is why my mom taught me how to completely cover your toilet seat by draping TP across it, covering the hole. I've taught my kids how to do this and I continue to do this at every public restroom I go into to which is why I take so long in there!

This year's camping trip to Iron Creek has to be the closest I've come to my childhood camping trips. Especially since we were sharing a site with my folks ( below with their new trailer ) , my husband's mom, my brother and his girls and had my Uncle David and Aunt Margie in the campsite next to ours and good family friends two sites down! My Uncle Thom and Aunt JoJo were there on Saturday and we used to do a lot of camping with them and my cousins growing up and camping with both Uncle David and Uncle Thom was always so much fun and probably one of the reasons I love camping so much now. Both would find creative and funny ways to entertain us kids. Uncle Thom once put two holes in a stump like an electrical outlet and then when plugging in his ( battery operated ) radio would turn the switch on, then would turn it off when pulling the plug out of the stump outlet. This truly amazed not only us kids but our Japanese Exchange students that were camping with us! We thought he'd found an electrically wired stump in the forest.

We were set and ready as always to use the smelly outhouses again this time but were surprised to find that all new outhouses had been built at Iron Creek! No more flies and they didn't even stink! They had new dry wall and new paint, new everything! The kids liked them so much we kept finding them locked inside singing loudly because of the cool echo and had to shoo them out so others could use them.

Uncle Thom brought out his ice cream machine this time and the girls all sat around watching and waiting.

When it was done we had ice cream and brownies. Yum. Here's the ice cream man - Uncle Thom serving it up.

Some sittin' round the campfire time roasting up some hot dogs for lunch before heading back down to the river to try for some more fish.

This year's gang of kids hanging out at the picnic table while the grownups are slowly packing things up to go home.

Tinsel got to come along on his first ever camping trip. We brought all four of our dogs. They all behaved very well. Tinsel made himself a bed under some ferns.

So, I said at the beginning that I'm throwing my book of camping rules out the window because I've realized that really these rules were just camping 'ideas' formed in my head by the way we camped during my childhood. I was getting frustrated by the fact that we couldn't always camp in the deep dark woods and my husband would sometimes park us in a field ( which was a total camping no - no to me before ) where we can see other campers ( also a no - no. ) Where a burn ban might be on so no campfire ( no fire???? What's the point?? ) He likes to set up camp and then leave the site for the entire day - by car ( also a huge no no ) and drive around exploring or hunting. I like to hang out at the campsite, fixing up camp food, keeping things tidy, reading, talking to the kids, playing in the trees with the kids, going on hikes and walks all within the campground. Lock the car and leave it. No going back home, if you've forgotten an item - deal with it and try to remember it next time - no running off to the store. Hey, my parents went hiking and camping for their honey moon, brought canned food to eat and forgot the can opener. Did they go back home??? No. They just dealt with it and caught fish instead. You're camping - not staying at a resort. It's time to rough it! That for me is the whole fun! No pressure to get clean, pack up to drive anywhere, wait for anyone to return, flush toilets etc... Well, I realized this was just one of those things that fell under the category of " It's not bad, it's not good, it's just different." And I need to get my panties out of bunch about it. According to Sunset Magazine, I'm classified as a " Solitude Seeker" when it comes to camping and that's fine but I need to be able to incorporate the ways my husband wants to camp without being so rigid with my camping rules. I will say, it was fun to re live it all last week though and share my memories with our kids and hopefully help them learn fun ways to camp as they grow up. ( With out a 'rule book.' )

( Chelan making herself comfortable for the ride home. )

Hiking an Old Growth Forest

There is a trail through the old growth forest that surrounds the Iron Creek campground where we were staying. My mom and I were able to take my three older kids and three of my brother's girls on this 1 1/2 mile hike.

A 'slide' under a fallen tree leading to the edge of the river.

This huge tree fell leaving a crater inside the stump where the wood had rotted out.

Mom and the kids next to a huge cedar.

Going over a little wood bridge. The kids played 'Three Billy Goat's Gruff' and two of them were the trolls under the bridge.

We needed three more people to make it around this tree. Pretty neat to think about what might have been going on around here when these trees were babies!

Fishing With the Boys

Tom and I took CT and Little J down to the river to do some fishing while we were camping last weekend. Tom started catching fish as soon as he put his line in. Little J wanted to touch the fish. Tom caught six but all were a bit too small to bring back and cook up.

CT didn't want to fish at first and Little J was getting grumpy because he wanted to swim IN the river and of course I wouldn't let him. Tom went up river a bit to let the dogs swim, I stayed put and threw my line in and CT, after baiting my hook for me with a big worm, decided he'd bait his own hook and cast his line in. He cast it way across the river, really nice, and waited. Then I hear him yelling to me that his line was stuck on a log. I told him how to work it loose. He kept calling back that it was still stuck. Then he yells, 'Mom, my reel fell off." Oh brother. I told him to just wait for his dad then. After a few minutes of seeing him trying to wind this huge ball of tangled string onto his reel, he yells over to me - " Hey, I caught a fish on my line!" He was pulling the string in by hand and when he got it in there was a fish on it.

That made his day better. He ended up catching the biggest fish of the trip and took it back to cook up for his dinner. He breaded it and fried it in butter and salt. He said it was good.

Burley Mountain

The first time we ever traveled up these narrow, winding, switchback dirt roads on Burley Mountain was July, 1996. We were camping at Iron Creek campground and made the drive up to check out the berry crops. They were everywhere! Wild huckleberries and blueberries and it was hot. MN was only 1 and a half and enjoyed grabbing berries and shoving them into her mouth. We went back down with three blue handed kids, stained by all the berries they picked. The drive is long and the road is only wide enough for one vehicle at a time and there's always a steep drop off to one side of you but thankfully my husband has never 'steered us wrong' on the trip up or down.

This year we decided to try camping here in August and get in some nice weather as opposed to the snow we met up here the past two Septembers. The berries are fresh and frozen then but so were our hands. We found only a handful of ripe blueberries, the rest were still green but the wild strawberries were growing all over the sides of the road. Here are my uncle and aunt hiking up the steep road with some of my kids and some of my nieces.

My husband spent the time up there running Tater and Chelan, searching for grouse. They found two. Still too early to hunt them but nice to give the dogs a whiff of what they'll need to be looking for in the fall. The red flowers are Indian Paintbrush.

CT and two of my brother's girls stand at the edge of the road for a photo and Little J kept up quite well with help from 'Nana's hand. Nice to be up there in the sunshine with my coat off this time.

Camping at Iron Creek

We look forward to our annual camping trip at Iron Creek all year long! Originally, we had reserved our site this year for Friday through Monday ( Labor Day ) but the kids and I couldn't wait to get out there and set up so my husband agreed to load us up, drive us out there and drop us off on Thursday evening. He still had to go to work Friday so he would go back home and meet us back out there on Friday night. We checked the campground web site to see if our reserved site was open for Thursday night and it showed that it was so off we went! We got out to the campground to find that someone had pulled in just before us and grabbed our site for just that night. Ugh. What to do. We decided to check with the camp hosts who gladly showed us to an open site in a different loop of the campground. As we were setting up our tent trailer we decided we really liked the new site and asked if we could just transfer our reservation for the whole week end over to where we were now setting up. No problem! We're soooooo glad we went out a day early! The weather was great all day on Friday. Above is our site all nice and tidy - even dry you might say! MN is happily peeling potatoes for our dutch oven dinner.

The kids and I had a cozy night alone after visiting with the Vick and Bowerman families around their campfire for about an hour ( they were camping at Iron Creek too only their sites were next to the site we'd originally reserved. ) The only down side to moving our site # was we're now 2 whole loops away from our friends but that just gave us more exercise in getting over there to visit with them several times a day! We took several walks, bike rides, got to try out pulling MN and Little J in our new bike trailer behind my bike and we took a walk down to the river.

CT got busy right away making a shelter in the forest. The kids enjoyed playing in this and had a couple of pinecone wars. That evening we looked forward to our first ever meal made in a dutch oven and the return of my husband! He made it safely out but the meal was kind of a disaster as the chicken wasn't anywhere near done enough to eat at 7pm ( I'd put it in at 2:30 pm and carefully followed all instructions on how to cook it! ) He was hungry, tired, our fire had gone out just before he arrived, our wood was wet and it started to sprinkle. Still, we ate some and headed over to the Bowermans site where we all enjoyed celebrating Anna's 16th birthday and good company around their roaring fire! Thanks guys!!!

This photo describes Saturday. WET! My husband's uncle came out to our campsite and the two of them headed off to try hunting grouse for the day. We did what we could in the rain. Rode bikes with rain gear on, had a treasure hunt, ( The Iron Creek pirates snuck through the camp ground and hid some treasure and clues to find it for the kids. ) and then with help from some - okay - a lot of lighter fluid and some purchased kindling, we got a nice fire going of our own. Hey, if you've got dry clothes stashed away somewhere to wear to bed at night, there's no harm in standing around a fire and getting wet in the rain.

That evening we went over to the Vick's campsite to enjoy some great fried - everything ( food ) for 'Fry Night' - and the kids had a light parade using all of the glow bracelets, sticks and necklaces they'd gotten in the treasure hunt. Here are our kids along with the Bowerman girls and Manley boys after their parade.

Here's a photo without my flash so we can see the glow of their treasures.

Little J was super happy to sit by the fire and play with the glow bracelets.

"He's an Angel! " Bet says as she holds a bracelet above his head.

If you've visited my mom's blog Spot on Cedar Pond you've seen how our Sunday at Iron Creek went! ( RAINY!) We did give the dutch oven another try - this time with cake! Lemon cake with 3 handfuls of the wild huckleberries on top that we were able to pick in the freezing rain and wind up at Burley Mountain. The cake turned out FABULOUS! It was so tasty, perfectly cooked and was nice to eat warm on that cold, wet evening. The next morning we weren't too sad to get started packing up to leave. In the photo above, Little J and KN had just woken up and were still warm and snugly - and smiling.

I've decided I'm the kind of camper who likes camp grounds like Iron Creek best. The kind with no real bathroom or electricity. The kind where the folks you pass sitting around their camp fires probably did just shoot or catch their own dinner to fry or grill that night. They probably grew their own side dishes too. Rustic enough camping that everyone smells like campfire smoke for the entire week and when your hair gets dirty you wear a hat but at the same time - all the strangers you see still have all of their teeth and you wouldn't mind asking them what breed of dog is pulling them on it's leash. That's Iron Creek and I imagine we'll be going back for years to come. Should you ever be in the area - you're always welcome to have a seat by our fire ( it might not be going. ) and share a hot dog. ( It might be soggy. ) We'll even lead you by flashlight down to the nearest outhouse.