Only 2-1/2 days after getting home from Victoria, we packed up the camping gear and went to Kalaloch (pronouced klalok) Campground on the coast to go camping with Court, Brad and the kids. (Brent planned this trip before we had planned the Canada trip. I don't think we'll be traveling so much in a week anymore.) It's about 3-1/2 hours from here. Brent took a half day off of work, so we could get there early enough to start dinner.
For Brent's birthday, my parents gave him a new tent. This was also a gift for me. Let me explain. Brent is a backpacker. He loves to get lost in the woods and commune with nature. I, on the other hand, have a VERY vivid imagination and am just learning to camp. (What do I mean by vivid imagination? If you have ever seen the Vin Diesel movie "Pitch Black", you'll understand. Basially, I'm pretty sure that there are scary things all over that I can't see. I'm getting much better, but I'm still kind of a baby.) Anyway, since Brent is a backpacker, he has a light, 2 person tent that he takes backpacking. This tent was not big enough to have an air mattress in. I don't really enjoy sleeping on the floor, so we now have a big tent that I can have my air mattress in. Yeah!
Ok, big might be an understatement. After this trip, I have dubbed the tent the "Taj Mahal". It's a little too big for just the two of us, but I really like it. Oh, this is half of our campsite. We got one of the campsites where you could have two tents. This is our area. Just behind those bushes is the ocean. This is an awesome place to camp!
This pictures is taken just behind our tent from the last picture. It was great to listen to the ocean all day. Kyle kept taking about the "noisy racecar". It took us awhile to figure out that he thought the ocean sounded like a noisy racecar. That's a cute kid!!Court, Brad and the kids got there a little before dinner was ready. Unfortunately, none of us had realized how chilly it would be at the coast. Just so no one has the same problem we did - no matter what time of year, always bring a lot of layers when you camp at the coast. Luckily, there was a lot of driftwood right down on the beach so we got to have a nice warm fire. It was just hard to walk to the bathrooms.
Brent made chicken and rice in the dutch oven for dinner. There is just something about dinner made in a dutch oven that make it yummy. We also had raspberry cobbler for dessert. Yummy!
So, we shivered around the fire for a little while, then all went to bed. It was pretty cold, but we toughed it out. Here are some great pictures of us around the fire.
The next morning, Brent made breakfast in the dutch oven. We forgot the ketchup, so I was worried, but it turned out REALLY good. Brent's such a good cook. :)
I asked Court to try to french braid my hair for the rest of the trip. Unfortunately, I had to brush out my hair in order to have her braid it. And, she wanted a picture. So...I'm going to be an adult and put my gorgeous picture on the internet, so you can all have a good laugh.
Ok, hopefully, you've gotten back on your chair after falling off laughing so you can see how cute the french braiding turned out.
Court is an expert french braider because it didn't even think about falling out for the next day and a half! Sarah wanted her hair braided too so we could be twins. It was super fun!We spent most of the next day at the beach. We flew kites, made sand castles, and beach combed. Chloe and I found a sea star that may have been dead, but we decided to throw it back just in case. We found bits of sand dollars and lots of cool rocks. I love picking up rocks from the beach. It's a weird obsession.
To get to the beach, you had to climb over the drift wood. While pretty, it was kind of difficult to get over, especially with the little kids. It was worth it though.
What is this picture of, you ask? It's Brent's kite in another tree. How many times can one kite get stuck in trees. I think it likes to be in trees. (If you're wondering what I'm talking about, please seen the next post.) This one was easier to get out, but it still made us laugh.Brent is in love with flying kites right now. He even has this little stunt kite. It's fun to fly, but I wanted my own kite. Last year when my parents were here, I flew my dad's kite which is about 6' across. It almost pulled you off your feet. So fun! So, I got one that is 7' across. It definitely makes your arms tired, but is fun to fly. We have too many kites!
We loved Kalaloch Campground. It wasn't busy, it was BEAUTIFUL and it wasn't too far away. If any of you would like to go camping there, we'll break out our Taj Mahal and go!
The mountains are the Olympic Mountains - America. Kind of a foggy/cloudy day!
We don't seem to be worrying about the weather though. Just happy to be going on vacation.
This isn't a really good picture, but I hope you can see it. This is a semi on the ferry. We take ferries across the sound all the time. There are always semi's on the ferries, but they can just pull in straight. The Coho is totally enclosed, so the semi had to turn a little bit, then back up, then turn a little bit, then back up... It took quite a while for them to get out, but really interesting to watch.
Once we had checked into our hotel, we went over to Goldstream Provincial Park. As the name suggests, there is gold in the river here. Brent thought I was just kidding about panning for gold, so we decided to just hike instead. 
Although, one thing that was in bloom was this wisteria. (Ok, I think it was wisteria. The flower looked like wisteria, but I've never seen it in yellow before. Normally it's purple.) I love this picture of Brent. He doesn't always look great in pictures, but this is good!
This is the sunken garden. The azaleas and rhododendrons are out, but the summer plants had just been planted out so you can only see the dirt. It was nice seeing the azaleas in bloom though. They are VERY pretty!
We got there just after they opened. It was kind of chilly still, but it did warm up by the time we were done.
You know I always have to put in some pictures of flowers. This is a Blue Poppy. Pretty descriptive name. Isn't it GORGEOUS! We are going to get some for our yard. They did have seeds there, but they were REALLY expensive and said that they were for "expert gardeners". I'm trying to decide if I'm an "expert" or not. I really want them though...hmmm...
When we were in Hawaii, there was this place on the northeast side of the island where the Japanese tourists would stack stones. We found out that they are called "safe journey stones". It's an Asian tradition. We thought that was awesome, so we decided to make our own safe journey stones. Mine is the shorter one, but I think the prettiest!
Yeah, it works! Flies great! Flies so great that it flies right into a tree. Brent gets it out of that tree just as another gust of wind comes up and slams it into another tree. And now it's stuck.
It's about 20' up. Brent's first thought is to pull it out. That looks like it might work until the string breaks. Then he thinks he's going to climb the tree to get it out. I then nicely reminded him that he wasn't 10 anymore, so no, he wasn't going to climb the tree. At this point, I'm thinking we might have to leave this homemade kite in a tree. Then, Brent finds a half full water bottle and starts throwing it up at the kite. After about 20 minutes of this, the kites is out of the tree. HOOORAY!
After this, we feel it may be time to move to Australia. (This is in reference to one of my favorite books - Alexander and the No Good Very Bad Day.) We decided to go back to the hotel instead.
We had lunch at the Old Spaghetti Factory and then said good bye to Canada...
Quite a bit nicer day, wasn't it?