First Landing Get Away {Personal}

I can’t believe that I went camping by myself for the first two days of this trip. I spent 5 days and 4 nights at my First Landing get away. It was weird to camp by myself – but it was worth it. I definitely don’t feel the need to do it again, but I learned a lot about myself.

Thing 1:

I need to be stimulated. I don’t know how to turn off my brain enough to be alone in the woods for 2 days. Don’t get me wrong – it’s First Landing State Park and there were people everywhere. But being alone on your campsite and not having anyone to hang out with was super weird. I brought a book, I made some campfire nachos, I wandered onto the beach and saw the sunset, and the full moon.

Thing 2:

I made it through a pretty badass storm in my hammock. I had this cool moment (well, less than cool moment) at about midnight on the second night when I heard the thunder coming and I called my husband and asked what I should do. We basically decided that I said I was going to camp by myself for two nights, so I was going to ride it out. I forced myself to go to sleep because I thought the storm would wake me up. It totally didn’t – I woke up about half-way through the worst of it to missed calls from my husband and a bunch of texts from Mike and Loren. They all thought I left. I didn’t. I rolled with it. It was super weird to be in a hammock in the middle of a thunderstorm. I couldn’t see the lightning because of my tarp, but I heard that it was nuts. 

Thing 3:

I’d much rather camp with my friends and family.

Then, the day that I had been waiting for came and my friends and family joined me. They showed up with all the fun things (Mike brought me donuts, and that was great), and we started to set up camp. The kids loved the trees everywhere.  We took a trip to the beach with the kids, and they loved playing in the water and trying to find sea glass.

And then Mel showed up with the outside cake. Her dog ate the first one – and she totally didn’t have to do that. Oh, that’s right – I forgot to mention that it was my birthday weekend. It was awesome that she brought me some delicious cake for us to eat – but we all realized that we didn’t have enough dishes to make it happen, so we ate it like a freaking champion team of people with forks straight off the plate. The outside cake was where it’s at.

And no family trip is complete without a few meltdowns…

But we always turn it around.

The family camping trips are the best. There’s really nothing like them – not a ton of technology, all the sunsets and sunrises, watching the kids explore. Late night bike rides, watching the giant moon on the beach, hanging out around the fire. I seriously can’t wait for the next one.