Into the wild

Hello! We've been gone all month, camping and Brown family lakecation-ing We left on July 1st and came home July 11th. Time to get a-posting! First up: family camping! We planned to camp one or two nights in Mt. Rainier National Park on our way to the Brown family reunion/lakecation this year, so we left two days early and drove westward into the mountains. 

Hello, Mt. Rainier!

We left Wednesday afternoon around 4pm, after Spencer went home. The campsite we had picked out was supposed to be 2 hours from our house and we had to stop at the store on the way there. We thought we'd arrive in plenty of time to make a fire and cook dinner before bedtime. That estimate did not include the bathroom stops and winding roads. When somehow we were only in Naches, WA at 6pm, we decided to grab dinner at a restaurant before heading into the mountains. We don't eat out very often at all. It's just not in the budget (and we don't have much more than Pizza Hut and Subway in our town). So I was apprehensive about wasting money at an unknown, possibly gross, diner-type nook in tiny Naches. Much to my surprise, The Sticky Fingers Cafe and Bakery had excellent (and affordable) homemade pizza! The owner said she makes her own crust and sauce and grinds her own pork. We ordered one large za and chowed it down. It was the best "camping" meal I've ever had!

Amber enjoying some tasty pizza crust.

After a large delicious pizza feast, we clambered back into our trusty van and continued on our way to Mt. Rainier National Park. When we arrived at the Ohanapecosh campground, there was a fancy computerized pay station. I jumped out, selected a campsite, and inserted a $20 bill. When we found the campsite, however, it was occupied, along with every single other campsite at Ohanapecosh. (there are 188 sites there!) By this point, it was after 8pm. We decided to say goodbye to that wasted $20 and keep on driving until we either found an open campsite or arrived at the lakehouse.

22 miles of mountain road later, we came upon a fork in the road and a sign for White River Campground. We didn't know how far down the fork we'd have to travel or if that campground would be full too once we got there, but we decided to take a peek. Jay offered to pray that we would find a campsite, so he said a sweet little prayer in the back seat while we drove. We found one! It was tiny and cramped, but we had our tent up by 9pm, and the kids were asleep by 10--all but Amber, that is, who had fallen asleep in the car and had a hard time going back to sleep. She finally drifted off and then Jeff and I settled in for a very no restful night's "sleep." Jay kept snuggling in to Amber and she kept waking up. I kept scooting Jay away from her and then trying to get comfy again and let's just say sleep came in 30 minute stretches all night until around 5:30am, when the kids started waking up.

It wouldn't be a White family camping trip without some late night tent selfies:

Sleepers...except the baby

It felt so strange not to have a fire while camping, but we were all quite clean in the morning!

A morning bottle. We used a large Thermos to keep Amber's bottle-water nice and hot. It worked like a charm--she had hot bottles for the entire trip and we never had to light a fire.

View of our campsite from the tent--the van took up the whole site and our tent barely fit. It wasn't the most remote or private kind of camping, but the wind still whispered through the pines and the river still roared in the distance. And there were flushing toilets around the corner. Cushy camping!

 

 That little Amberface!

We ate cold pancakes for breakfast, explored the trees a little, and then drove to our trailhead of choice: Silver Falls.