Camping Trip Summer 2011

There is no secret that we love road trips and camping, but I was never outdoorsy until...well, I started this mother-and-son road trip tradition after my boy lost his father when he was five. Okay, this post will be a bit more personal than my intentions. I wanted to keep camping as our family tradition as his father would have wanted. After his passing, I felt that I had to provide my boy as a mother, but as a "father" too. You know just because he is being raised by a single mom doesn't have to limit his "masculine" activities which are mainly planned by a father in most households as it had been for us. My boy sacrificed a lot at such a young age with no male role model around and mom working on weekends (he was the reason not opening on Sundays at Peapod's early age and occasional emergency closings). There were many many meltdowns. Yeah, the boy had them, but mom had more :-) So I started to plan something adventurous, something out of ordinary just for him...and myself. Something he will remember and tell his kids about someday. The first road trip for just the two of us was to the Grand Canyon and Death Valley several summers ago. Boy, it was crazy, but we had a blast! We can laugh about those "we shouldn't have come" moments now. Since then we became addicted to road trips. It's simple, flexible, and spontaneous. And combined with camping, it's economical. And best of all, since we are cut off from most modern conveniences during the trip, our bonding is stronger. So that's the story.

We started to talk about where we wanted to go this summer, and Oregon came up first on our list. I started to research campgrounds and found one that is accessible to what we wanted. A river or lake, flush toilets, and a warmer temperature. It looked like a popular place, but luckily I was able to grab one site which was available in five consequent days. I also booked one campground near Crescent City as a transit so I wouldn't have to drive 12 hours non-stop. With a kid and a dog, it would take longer than that actually. I chose the 101 route for one other reason. So we could stop by a small college town called Arcata to show the boy where his father and I spent a lot of time together when we were younger. So I gave you guys a very short notice and hit 101 North. I don't have as many pictures as I hoped because I forgot to bring a charger for my camera and the battery died as soon as we arrived in Oregon. I bought an instant camera, but more than half of the photos were very poorly taken by the boy with his hand covering the lens. Can you believe he was taking a photography class last semester? Well, it is what it is.

about five hours to arcata and another hour to crescent city...
we stopped and hung out at arcata for about an hour. it was my first time in years. the town looked the same as i remembered. the boy felt like a bagel so we stopped by at los bagel where his father and i had breakfast many many mornings back in the early 90's.

after crescent city, drive another 20 minutes on 199...
there it is! panther flat is in the middle of the beautiful redwoods. we loved it!
it became one of our favorite campgrounds...

the campground resides along the smith river...

just relaxing and enjoying the peace at our site. it had very good privacy.
because it is 20 miles inland, it gets sunny and warm...
made a table for a change from a messy camping table...i should do this more often...
having lunch in the woods was a good thing...

humans' eyes get red, but did you know that the dog's eyes get turquoise?
we went back to town (crescent city) next day for some supplies i forgot to bring, and luckily we found out that there was a county fair going on that weekend...

because it is right on the coast, the weather is very similar to san francisco :-(
the sky was gray, but it has small town charm...

one surprising thing about this small town was how nice and polite people were...
this coffee shop knows how important the local support is for their small independent business. love their attitudes and spirits! the shop girls were genuinely polite and so were the folks waiting inside the tiny depot. they were so well-mannered.

our second destination, about an hour inland from salem, oregon...
detroit lake in detroit, oregon...

we had an easy access to the lake as our site was facing it, but unfortunately it lacked privacy. there was no divider from our neighbor. see a part of the neighbor's tent on the two photos below...

our home for the next five days...

the boy making breakfast...(see how close the neighbor's site is? the white tent is theirs, not ours).

despite the lack of privacy, it was very nice to have breakfast with the lake view. very vacationy :-)

we are gourmet campers :-) we were truly amazed to see those enormous single standing grills with propane which many of our neighbors dragged out from their backyard, and we were even more amazed to see (and hear) that only thing they cooked in those grills was nothing but hot dogs. and i got the sense that eating veggies was just not their daily practice. that was sad...okay, never mind their business. anyway, cooking on a camp fire is a big part of camping fun for us. our regular camping meals are steaks, some veggies (tomatoes, asparagus, corns, mushrooms, peppers, potatoes, and anything good on the grills). after we run out of those, eggs, tortillas, and salsa become our meal of the day. my boy makes killer breakfast burritos. we love grilling seafood too. overall, camping makes everything tastier. it's true!

oh, don't forget marshmallows too...
so, overall, we liked detroit lake campground. there are nice sites with good privacy, but each site is pretty close to each other. I felt like we moved to an outdoor city condo. my impression was that it is a good family campground. it has a playground, volleyball and basketball courts, and the lake provides all day fun on the beach. there are a lot of families with huge numbers of kids in the entire ground riding on scooters from early morning to dusk. so i wouldn't call it peaceful and quiet. our right side neighbor had probably six or seven kids and we heard constant screaming and yelling from kids...and mom. mom kept yelling she would wash the kids' mouth with the strongest soap, but we thought she was the one who needed that treatment, seriously...and to our left, parents with a teenage boy who stayed up till 3 or 4am every single night getting drunk and talking with the radio on...they were not being loud, but we were in the deep nature, so it sounded like they were talking right next to my ear. So it was unfortunate to have the loudest families as our neighbors even though it was pretty entertaining to watch them :-) oh, i would avoid site b21 if there is a next time.

on the way home was all about vws and airstreams...
we took a country back road to explore and saw a bunch of vw buses at this auto repair shop...

and came across this picture perfect scenery...

a vintage airstream for sale...very clean and revamped inside. the floors were gorgeous! $5900! anyone? i would consider it if it was a smaller one...

the grass was very green at a small town called myrtle creek where we had an ice cream break...

dash frantically sniffed and ran in a circle while i was passing out...he was so happy to run off leash...

a small big town, grants pass...yeah, it's the climate! sunny and hot! I am missing it already, especially coming home to this freaking cold summer in sf :-(

thank you, oregon! see you next time...sorry for the poor photo (taken by the boy from a running car).

one other thing i love about road trips is thrifting. small town thrift stores are the best! a few sunny items came home with us. love them!

and a new old t-shirt for my next camping trip. how perfect is this? how can i resist $1.75 anyway?

and of course, new additions to my heart rock collection...