The Catanzaro Family: Camping Out - The Real Thing This Time

Back in June we shared the Eastlake campout pictures. That campout sparked the idea that we should really go camping complete with woods and a campfire. We decided to stay local for our first family campout and went up to Lake Cuyamaca. We stayed at the Paso Picacho campground and brought Auntie Brandie and Uncle Sean along for the fun. Thank goodness they came because camping is hard work with two little kids. Jacob had a great time playing in the dirt with a boy from another campsite. Olivia had a good time too but it was difficult to keep up with her constant falling over rocks and rolling down hills. We think it will be easier when she's a little older and a lot steadier on her feet!

We left Friday, August 3rd and just spent the weekend. We got our campsite all set up and Brandie and Sean had the site next to ours. We explored the campground and had our first marshmallow roast. Saturday we made a big breakfast and then went hiking at Green Valley. We took the Green Valley Falls Trail up to a rock waterfall. Being August there wasn't a lot of water but there was enough to cool off and splash around. It was a perfect pool for the kids to play in and chase water bugs. That night we had another campfire complete with smores and roasted hot dogs. It was a great adventure to watch a family of raccoons wandering around the outskirts of the camp right before we headed off to bed. Sunday as we were packing up we got to see a hawk that flew right into the middle of our campsite. It grew quite a crowd of neighboring camper.

We arrived home Sunday afternoon, covered in dirt but already talking about our next trip. It was fun to spend some family time without television and all the distractions of home. It was a lot of work to set things up and take it all down again but well worth it. (Brandie has all the pictures of the campsite so hopefully you'll see those later!)