Dogwood Camping, Day 1

We arrived at Dogwood Camp Grounds on Thursday around 4pm. Dogwood is located in the San Bernadino National Forest. Since we arrived on a Thursday in mid-May we had this side of the campgrounds almost to ourselves. I loved it! Brad, being the people-watcher that he is, liked it better when we had neighbors. And check out our cargo box! I now consider ourselves experienced campers! Well, not quite. We learned a valuable lesson about weather. Checking "San Bernadino" weather is not the same as the San Bernadino mountains! When San Bernadino is in the 90's you can look forward to 70's in the mountains. If you see it's going to be in the 60's on Sunday assume that's going to be near freezing that morning in the mountains. Okay, it wasn't freezing, but that Sunday morning was cold! So while it wasn't technically freezing it was "we're not in South Bay anymore, Todo" kind of weather.

The kids usually latch onto a couple of favorite activities at each camp sight. This camp sight they spent hours pretending to be water fairies. They dug irrigation canals and filled bucket after bucket of water to spill into the ditches. The other favorite activity was digging into dead tree stumps for firewood and termites.

All I was doing was walking back from the bathroom, but Kaeley was so excited to be camping she got out some of that energy by running to greet me.

At night, of course, we had to have marshmallows. All but Alynna were very interested in learning how to build and sustain fires. Simon was a comfortable around the fire (too bad) but it was much better than it was last year camping with a toddler.

We were on the edge of the loop that wrapped near the edge of the mountain. Let me tell you, that wind whipped up something fierce! Burr!