Tuesday, July 14, 2015

The great outdoors

I am pleased to report that we've survived another Summa family camping adventure! This year we decided to go to a place a little closer to home. We love Big Bear, but the 2+ hour drive into the mountains makes it just far enough to be a pain on a Friday night. Instead we went to Mount Laguna in the Cleveland National Forest which is a blissful 1 hour from our house. We camped with nine other families, which made the experience really fun! The kids got to ride bikes and scooters and hang out with all their best buddies while the parents sat around, chatted and drank a lot of beer. Perfect!

The amazing thing about Mount Laguna is that you have two completely different climate zones right next to each other. We went on a hike one morning that started in the middle of a pine tree forest and ended a few miles away in the desert!
Hiking the Pacific Crest Trail - gorgeous!
All our little campers on the trail! 
 Searching for treasure on a nature scavenger hunt
No camping trip is complete without an obscene amount of s'mores!

One of the other fun things about this trip is that there was a little amphitheater right next to our campground. As you can imagine, the kids were really excited about putting on "shows" for us. Mac appointed himself director/producer/boss man and Paige made herself the choreographer. It was hilarious. 

I don't know that we're cut out to be hard core campers, but getting out in the wilderness once in a while is good for the soul. We had a great time and are looking forward to making this an annual tradition!