Turkey Day with a Twist…

…but no turkey although there were some good times with our little family! We decided to do the non traditional Thanksgiving and go camping.

But I better start off earlier that day…We spent the whole morning cleaning out cars so that we could fit all of our stuff and firewood into the two cars to take, but then our friend Ed lent us his truck (woo-hoo!) so we threw everything in the back of the truck, threw the kids in the car and headed on our way. We were quite hungry (since we left at lunch time) and we had decided that In-N-Out would be our turkey day lunch but as we pulled up it was closed. I almost started to cry—would any place be open? I didn’t want to eat just anywhere; it was Thanksgiving for cryin’ out loud! We passed more and more closed restaurants and I started getting worried but just as we approached the freeway we found an open Del Taco and decided that it would have to do (although I didn’t order off of the dollar menu for once!)

Once we were fed and happy we traveled up the coast for a little over an hour to the site of one my favorite childhood memories-Big Sycamore Canyon Campground in Pt. Mugu State Park just South of Oxnard off PCH. It was a beautiful, clear, warm and sunny day and the drive was pleasant. We got to the campground and it was so packed that we were only able to find one open campground (or so we thought) so we set up camp there (since there wasn’t a ranger anywhere to help us). Just after we got all set up we realized that we were in the group section and that someone was in our spot and we had to move our stuff (giant tent included) to another area and it was starting to get dark.

We literally threw everything back into the truck and headed around to the other loop and set everything up again just in time for the sun to go down. Thad made a fire, I started making dinner by lantern light. We had a traditional Marcroft camping dinner—potatoes and hotdogs—they were delicious. We ate and then sat by the fire for a little while till it was time for bed. We tried putting the kids down by themselves but after about an hour of them running like crazy boys in the tent we decided to go to "sleep” too. It was a crazy night of boys that move around too much in their sleep (Sammy kept wiggling out of his sleeping bag and Nate kept flipping around heads/tails etc), trying to stay warm (the blankets kept getting kicked off) but we survived it.

In the morning Thad got up and made a fire (it was still quite chilly) and had hot chocolate. Then I made bacon and eggs for breakfast and the sun finally decided to come out. We played in the campground for a while before we decided to take a trip down to the beach. It was a nice, short trail, and we got there quickly. We stayed for a while before it was time to go and clean up camp. After cleaning up camp we drove back to the beach, ate a little lunch and played in the sand and water until the boys were cold and ready to pass out.

We really did have a fun time and will definitely be going back to this campground! Enjoy the pictures!