Northwest Neverland: Lopez Island Camping Trip

We took a great camping trip over Memorial Day weekend with three other couples. We camped right on the beach in Lopez Island-and I mean ON the beach. In fact, we had to park about a half mile up a hill and hike down to our campsites.

We started the trip with a drive to Anacortes and a ferry ride over to the island. We left the house early Saturday morning in hopes to catch the 8:40 ferry. The ferries to Lopez don't run very often so they are very spread out. Despite arriving an hour early, we missed the ferry by TWO cars! As we looked around we noticed that all of the couples we were meeting (minus one who made the ferry) were within 3 cars of us. So, we pulled out the snacks and lawn chairs and spent the morning in the parking lot with all the kids. It was a long morning, but we were so thankful for the company. Four hours later, we boarded the ferry and headed off to Lopez.

Views of the San Juan Islands and Mount Baker from the ferry. It was a short, but gorgeous ride! We had awesome weather the whole weekend. Very chilly nights, but very warm days-about as perfect as May can be in Washington.

As I said before, it was quite a hike straight downhill to the campsite. We had to load up wheelbarrows with all the camping gear and hike it down to our site. Okay, Mike had to hike. I made the trip very few times. This is the dogs tied to the wheelbarrow attempting to make themselves useful. Not totally successful, but very entertaining. The campsites in the background are all the other couples. There were not very many campsites in this area so it was pretty much our private beach for the weekend. The dogs were able to run loose and the kids could run from site to site. In total we had 7 kids under 5 so they had a blast running loose and camping away from cars and parking lots made it possible for us to relax a bit while the kids played.

This is the view from our tent. Not bad to wake up to in the morning...

On Saturday the "big boys" rented kayaks and paddled around the islands for a few hours. Ian loved it and I guess they spent some of the time racing each other so Mike was consistently instructed to "go faster Papa" as they paddled. They both had a blast!

The boys stopped by our beach to say hello on their trip.

Ian and Papa taking a break.

The season was off for crabbing, but clamming was in, so a few people went out at low tide and dug for clams. This is a picture of their haul that was later turned into very tasty clam chowder and steamed clams. What a treat!

Doing a little cooking of our own (both on the stove and "in the oven"-this is about 27 weeks along).

William sleeping in one morning (following being up from 4:30am until 6am). At this point in the mornings it was still very chilly so he is all comfy and bundled in the tent, sleeping in the sun.

Ian and Brody playing in the grass with, what else, trucks. Another good shot of the view.

Although we didn't get to go clamming, we did take a nice walk to search for shells. Ian was reluctant at first, but soon he got into the search and was eager to find different shapes and colors. He just insisted on not getting his feet wet so we had to carry him over the tidal pools and streams.