Over Memorial Weekend I went camping to Olympic National Park with Rachel.  Vu couldn’t come because he had class on Saturday and was going on his 6th week of being on call for work.  We left in the afternoon on Friday and drove to the campground.  We went to the coastal part of the park.  This was our second time to this part of the park, the first time was 9 month’s after we moved to Washington, 7 years ago.  We really love this park.  We are both a huge fan of water: ocean’s, rivers, lakes, waterfalls, rain, etc… which was a big factor in our decision to move to Western Washington.

Even though Rachel and I always talk on the phone a least a couple of times a week, we still didn’t have enough time to catch up on everything we wanted to share with each other in the four hour drive to the campground.  I love being a twin!  We stayed at the Kalaloch campground which is in the most southern tip of the coastal part of the park.  We love this campground because it is right in between all of the beaches, which is our favorite part.  The whole drive, from Snoqualmie to Kalaloch, the roads were lined with tons of these yellow flowers that I love.  They remind me of Wisteria, but yellow.  We got to the campground at 7:30 and set up camp and then started a fire to make tin foil dinners and s’mores.  We LOVE tin foil dinners.  We aren’t the most experienced fire starters, so I was very happy that we were able to successfully cook the dinners.

I have seen a ton of different ideas for s’mores so we tired out some ones that were new to us.  Our favorite was the Andes mints.  But the Samoa’s were really good too!

On Saturday we drove to Ruby Beach and walked around the beach for a while.  Then we headed up towards Forks and La Push.

We went back to the campsite and made a fire again and of course we read while we waited for our dinner to cook.  Once of my favorite things about camping is relaxing by the fire.

After dinner we walked along the beach next to our campsite and watched the sunset.  You have to love sunsets over the ocean.

On Sunday we got a very late start because I do not sleep well on the ground anymore.  I now understand why my parents always brought an air mattress to sleep on when we went camping.  I only slept for one hour the first night, and only 3 or 4 hours the second night.  I really missed my mattress.  We spent the day walking around Beach 3 and 4 waiting for the tide to go down to see all of the tide pools.  There were so many Anemones.

We also saw an eagle, which was pretty cool.  Even if you aren’t a big animal lover.  Which I am not.  I could never understand why my Mom got so excited every time we saw a deer.  Sorry Mom.

It started to rain in the afternoon and by the time we got back to the car we were drenched.  We headed back to the campsite and read in the tent the rest of the afternoon and night.  And let’s be honest, we thoroughly enjoyed that too.  We are our mother’s daughters.  We brought some canned food in case of rain, but we forgot a can opener.  We tried to rub the can on the pavement to open it, but couldn’t get that to work.  Has anyway actually done this successfully?

I was so exhausted that night that I slept much better.

Monday morning was a beautiful clear day.  Most of the people left the night before because of the rain, so we had the beach to ourselves, which was great.

We packed up and headed home in the afternoon.  I loved the trip and I have really missed going camping.  At the beginning of the weekend I was wondering why we don’t do this very often anymore, but by the end of the weekend I remembered.  It was so much more fun when Mom and Dad did most of the work.  Mom never forgot a can opener.  Good thing they are coming along for our trip to Banff in July. 🙂  And I forgot how much stuff you have to take with you, just for 3 days of camping.  Maybe we will go again in another 7 years.  Until then I will be very happy seeing the world staying in hotels!