J: Ok, we've rested up a bit and are ready to tell you about our camping trip to the coast. In a word-- it rocked.

W: Yup. It rocked.

Adventure= Two river crossings with guitar, two kiddos, and a dog who won't get his feetsies wet to get to beach. Here's Daddy plotting our course.

And helping me out a little.

The easier, and very pretty, part of the journey to the beach. W: I'm way back there.

J: My first view of the coastline, the mighty Pacific...

...and the sand. Can you tell how very impressed I am?

W: In an effort to discourage gender bias in my play things, mom built me a grand track for my cars and trucks. Apparently, I have cars and trucks. Not sure why. Neither they, nor this track, interest me in the slightest. Yup, so thanks, mom. I'm going back to build fairy princess sand castles with Daddy.

...and hunt for sea crabs!

Daddy found mussels...

...which were delicious.
W: I discovered that I LOVE to do dishes. Upon our return home, Mom and Dad sold our dishwasher and replaced it with three plastic blue tubs. I guess I was a little too enthusiastic about the dish washing.

It wasn't all hard work. Turns out, I discovered my favorite food on the planet:

S'mores.

Our campsite was on a creek, which provided endless hours of entertainment in the form of: throwing stones, crossing over and back, rock painting, watching for fish (wildlife tally to follow), working on my balance on the river rocks, building rock sculptures and dunking my little sister's toes in the cold, cold water. Wildlife sightings: Three snakes, a slug the size of my foot (bear with me, it gets better, but the slug was huge enough to be worthy of the list), bats swooping down on the river to eat, fish, crazy little fish that we thought were little sticks, a huge crab (alive), mussels (as you've seen), sand crabs, blue heron, sea lions (told you it got better) and, a drum roll please: WHALES! THAT was awesome!

(J: Yup. Cold.)

FYI: Fairies live here.

J: Hey, Mom? Dad? Can we go camping again next week?