I went camping in Ocean Shores, Washington this past weekend with two of my Northwest/Texas friends, Jessica and Allison. Jessica and I went to college together and Allison and I grew up going to church camp together. Allison also married a guy who I went to LCU with and who was the youth minister at my home church for a couple years, so we're all very connected!
Anyhow, Jessica now lives in Portland and Allison lives in Seattle, so it's great having them up here in the Pacific Northwest with me! Originally, this was supposed to be a trip with all of our husbands, but youth ministers get very little time off during the summer so it evolved into a girls trip.
We nicknamed this the "Weekend of Disappointments" by Friday evening, but it was still SO much fun! There were a lot of things that went wrong or didn't turn out like we hoped, but we made the best of it. After all, being together was the real goal and that turned out great!
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| Headed out the door with my huge pack...and crazy smile. |
As soon as we got to the campsite and checked in, we realized we got the short end of the stick when it came to campsites. Some of the sites around us had entire RV's parked in them with 2 tents set up. This is what ours looked like:
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| Worst Campsite Ever |
Well, Mr. Ranger informed us they were completely sold out and there weren't any other sites available. He did offer to get a tractor and drag the picnic table out of there for us. I let him know we probably didn't need any more tire tracks and mud, so we'd just leave the table alone and set up our tent right beside it on the only piece of flat land with grass available.
We checked back later to see if anyone had cancelled and Mr. Ranger's friend suggested we bring a tractor in to level the ground out. What is it with these people and tractors?? My guess is they got a new toy and they really wanted to use it. This was also the time we found out the entire campgrounds had been built on a wetlands/swamp area and that by modern standards, it would never pass code to be built. Mr. Ranger told us they never should have been built back in the 1960's...so have a nice stay! Weirdo.
Though we were never officially told so, we decided it was only fair that we didn't have to pay for parking since our campsite was so awful. So, we didn't pay and they didn't ask us to. We assume that means they agreed.
Jessica and I set up camp and then headed to see Ocean Shores and the beach. I thought we were camping on the beach before arriving, so I was initially disappointed to find out we'd have to drive a few miles to the beach. I would later be very grateful for this distance...but I'm getting ahead of myself.
The actual town of Ocean Shores seems to be still stuck in the 1970's. The buildings have clearly not changed in 40 years and the whole place seems very retro/horror movie-esque/just plain weird. It's hard to describe and clearly I'm not doing a great job of it here. Anyway, it was not the cute little tourist trap we'd hoped for. It was a tourist trap alright, just a pretty sorry one. I have much to say about the beach, but it's better described with pictures, so I'll wait for the pictures that come with Day 2 to explain.
After picking up some firewood, we headed back to camp to make dinner (fajitas! yum) and wait for Allison to arrive. She had worked that afternoon, so she made it to camp about 9:00. This is probably a good time to mention that Ally is almost 7 months pregnant and was camping. As in sleeping on the ground. She's amazing!
After Allison arrived at camp, we made a fire (big feeling of accomplishment! It was a first for all of us), ate some s'mores, talked until way past quiet hours and then finally went to bed many hours later than usual. All in all, a successful first day.
Coming up next...mummified baby sharks, beach front parking and a whole lot of doing nothing.
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