Finally a week to relax and chill out – I mean literally! It was a two day week of school which was just lovely and the hubby and I got to go and see The Hunger Games – Mockingjay part 2 which I loved! As it the trilogy was my favorite read over the summer. With the kids out from school from Wednesday it was time to just catch up on stuff and get ready for our visit to our friends place in Oakland for Thanksgiving. I made yummy
key lime pies for dessert and we had a veggie feast of Quorn and amazing sides including a sweet potato mash bake with candied pecans – yum!
After our feast we had the leftovers ready for our weekend getaway of camping at Little Basin State Park – I booked the cabins in summer when we visited over June this year when it was nice and warm and I thought from our thanksgiving weekend at Napa last year with the rain it would be full of banana slugs. Unfortunately, this year we were like frozen popsicles due to super cold temperatures – the cabins are heated but with a heater that sits atop the ceiling it is quite inefficient!! As it turns out you can talk to the front office about getting a space heater for your cabin as they know!
On our arrival the kids found the naturalist from the WOLF (Web of Life Field) School and we went searching for newts, slugs and fish in the creek – there was nothing to be found, the creek was dry and the weather was super cold! Not even a banana slug in sight, though we did find a lot of cool looking fungi.
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| The kids with Sunshine the Naturalist from the WOLF school |
The dark of night arrived just after 5pm and the weather was super cold by then and we had to get that extra layer of warmth on – meaning put on the thermals and add that extra knitted layer of cashmere plus another wool layer to keep the cold out. The fire was amazing but as soon as we hit the cabin it was a night of chills even in our sleeping bag and underneath a blanket – oh that space heater would have been amazing!!
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| Kids enjoying the fire at night after their one pot mac and cheese straight out of the Annie’s box |
The next day after thawing out by the fire and having a very long breakfast and sleep in due to the super cold morning. Everyone stayed tucked away in our sleeping bags until one of the boys started a fire for breakfast. It was so icy cold and after breakfast we were ready for a short hike through the forest to get the blood flowing and some exercise.
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| From little trees big trees grow! |
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| Playing with the equipment before the hike |
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| Little berries on moss found on the hike |
The morning we were leaving the overnight low was around -1 degrees C (30F) and the kids had found some frost on the ground which was so beautiful and very difficult to capture with a camera.
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| Their first discovery of frost on the weeds |
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| A frosty stick |
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| Frosty stars in the grass |
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| A frosty clover |
Heading back for my breakfast of eggs in holes hot off a iron skillet on the fire I found some beautiful redwoods and acorns on the way back to the cabin. I always appreciate the view of the sunshine beaming through a grove of redwood trees.
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| Beautiful sunshine keep me warm! |
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| An acorn family |
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| Our cabin number 9 was a perfect hideaway |
Thanks to some neighbors leaving on the Saturday who donated us some big logs of wood for our fire we were warm as toast for Saturday evening and Sunday morning it was pancakes on the grill by request of the kids.
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| Pancakes on the iron skillets – perfect! |
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| Close up of the warmth of the fire, just toasty |
Finally it was time to check out of camping and boy we were ready to head on home to our cozy houses and have a shower!
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| The gang outside our cabin ready to head on home!! |
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