Beach, Besties and Bugs

Some time during the late spring, I had this idea to go camping during the beginning of the up coming school year.  Just me and the kids.  To kind of take our show on the road.  Do what we do.  Just some where else.

My goal was to have hubby drop us off at a beach campground about 2 hours away.  Leave us down there for a bunch of days and we would do school and life and then he would come pick us up on his next day off. 

I shared the idea with a couple of my friends and our "school fall camping trip" was born.  Our three families, 15 in all minus husbands, spent a few days at the beach, camping and doing school and life.  It was an experience to say the least.

My friends went down on a Wednesday.  The hubbies helped set up and then went home.  As it turns out, the bugs were super, super bad.  So, when I came down the following day, I had to buy 11 extra bottles of bug spray.  Bad, bad bugs!

It was decided, that to avoid the bug problem, we would have a plan of how our days would go.  And the plan went something like this:  breakfast inside, when the sun came out and the morning heated up which would make the mosquitoes go away, the kids would play.  Then about mid-morning we would go to the beach until early afternoon.  We would come back, eat lunch, do some school and then let the kids play. Dinner would be early to beat the bugs before dusk and then we would head to the beach for sunset.  We would play at the beach again until bath time.  And then we all come back, get cleaned and go to bed.  Or at least hang out in our campers.  The bugs were so bad that we couldn't really be out after sunset.

We went out to eat one night and had ice cream another day.  One day the waves were so big that the kids got to basically surf on their boogie boards.  The boys did a lot of bike riding and exploring.  

It wasn't exactly how I envisioned it.  But, I think it worked out well all the same.  The kids had fun.  We got to see lots of nature.  Crabs, snakes, a racoon that was not the least bit afraid of us.  And bugs.  Lots and lots of bugs.

I am glad we did the trip.  And we learned a lot about camping without husbands.  It was an experience and it definitely was a memory maker.  I think next time it will be in the mountains.  Maybe somewhere cooler and definitely a place not quite so buggy. . .