Camping!

Well, the rain is finally starting to taper off (although it rained yesterday morning for the opening day of our farmers' market, which I missed due to work), so it's camping season again! We went camping the Sunday of Memorial Day Weekend after the weather turned out to be so much better than predicted. We had originally planned to camp the whole weekend, but then the weather folk predicted a full three days of rain, so we didn't. And so, of course, it was beautiful until Monday afternoon. Darcy was, as always, a big help in setting up camp in her somewhat interesting choice of outfit.

Due to our late start, we headed to the closest Oregon State Park, about thirty miles away. It's right on the beach, so we spent some very windy time playing in the water and sand. The campground has a great playground, so we spent some time there as well.

The morning was a bit chilly and Darcy was having none of it:

That's about as bundled as a small fairy-girl can get. She eventually thawed out enough to eat her pancakes before heading out on a wildflower expedition. The evening program the night before was a wildflower walk, which Darcy ended up loving. The guides let her keep a copy of the photocopied cheat sheet they used on the walk and Darcy walked around with it looking for some of the flowers she learned (or already knew):

She's styling in her PJs, vest, pink gloves, and pink-and-green knit hat (thanks again to Missy for our favorite hat!). On the way home, her flower chart got "scrunchled" so she had to draw her own. She drew a series of many boxes, just like on the chart. Hers are a variety of greens with a blob of color in the middle of some of them, but she did it so seriously and it came out as a pretty stunning piece of art even if it wouldn't help you identify a single flower.

Art is a major focus of Darcy's life these days. She made a leap a few months ago into representational art and will now draw very complex pictures that really do tell the story she wanted them to tell. Based on our earlier "Darcy Goes Camping" book that was the tale of her first camping trip illustrated with black and white photos, we made a "Darcy Goes Camping in Oregon" version for this trip. This time, though, we wrote the words -- mostly hers -- on the pages and then she illustrated it herself. The picture of the wildflower walk is amazing, with very recognizable foxglove, which is in peak bloom right now. My favorite might be the "hicycle". Darcy coined the phrase to describe a bicycle that rode around the campground. The seat and handlebars had been raised a few feet into the air so it was a high bicycle = hicycle. Without any guidance, she figured out how to draw that, along with the ice cream truck featured on the same "Darcy saw some cool things" page. We did not visit the ice cream truck due to the s'mores and popcorn that had already been consumed.

Maybe next time. Ice cream while camping does sound like a pretty good treat.