Over the Independence Day weekend we took Hayden on his first camping trip! It was amazing! It was a lot less stressful than I expected.
We heard from some other moms that traveling in the morning works best because babies are more likely to sleep and the temperature in the car would be lower. This made sense to us so we planned our car rides for the morning hours.
We woke early on Sunday morning and packed up the car. The camp site was near Black Canyon Lake about a two-hour drive from our house. Hayden slept almost the whole way and it didn’t get too hot; those other moms were right! We spent the day at the lake where Hayden and Sadie (this was also her first camping trip) experienced all of the new surroundings. Hayden stared at the water and the trees. He also loved crawling around the grass and dirt. I tried to keep him in the shade but he kept crawling away! Sadie stuck to the ground. She sniffed non stop until she got tired of being in the sun. Then she napped under the umbrella with Hayden, it was cute.
Jason pointed out all of the trees and animals that Hayden was seeing for the first time. He also walked into the lake and dipped Hayden’s feet in; the water was a little too cold for swimming. After we finished playing at the lake, we hung out at the camp site around the fire.
Hayden really enjoyed staring into the fire, haha! We just relaxed and talked with the friends we were camping with. Hayden was happy to just sit with us and join in the conversation. He gabbed all night long to everyone and didn’t get fussy until he was ready to sleep. When it was his bed time, he slept on our chests while we sat in chairs and we stayed up a bit later and made s’mores! I also had a wine cooler…it was delicious! Finally, we made our way to the tent and cuddled up for sleep. Sadie slept at our feet and Hayden slept between us. He didn’t make a peep all night, just woke up in the morning at his usual time with a smile on his face. What a good boy!
We ended the trip by leaving early on Monday so we could stick with the morning driving and avoid the heat. Again, it worked perfectly! I think we may go camping again this summer. We had tons of fun! You can see all of our pictures at our flickr site:
-
- Chilling in the shade
-
- AZ Tomans
-
- It’s a lake!
Sadie also saw some cows grazing around our site and she wanted to get them. it was funny until we saw the bull and quieted her down.
i also spooked the wild horses when i walked around one of the small pine trees. the big horse leading the other three up the hill was only 20 feet behind the tree. i then let them get further away when i took the pictures of them. they still stared me down even though i was a long way up the hill from them.