Search results

Sorry to hear that. I know it's a shock, but give it a little time and you may even come to think of it as an opportunity. I lost my job a couple weeks before Christmas in 2008 - single mom, 2 kids, huge blow. I gave myself a vacation to the end of the year and as I job hunted along with...

I'm not sure I've ever kept fish longer than 6 months because it gets eaten. Honestly, we could probably eat a freezer full of salmon in a couple of months. ;) That said, I also triple wrap fish in plastic wrap, making sure to press out air bubbles, but first I glaze it. Wash your fish but don't...

Not normally. I grew up in the country so I'm used to the night noises in the trees, and coyotes don't bother people. The only time I was ever nervous was camping in a campground on the Washington coast and being up at about midnight with my fire dying, kids asleep in the tent, reading a book...

I have lots of these in different sizes and I've reused them all. I have 2 in my tote bag now - one has a small homemade first aid kit in it, the other has a small homemade sewing kit in it. I've used them to store matches in and I have a tin full of mismatched nails and screws. Plus I keep...

I only started eating them a few years ago when they started showing up in restaurants (the local, organic, sustainable trendy kind) and a few friends served them at dinner. When I was a little girl a nasty boy threw some in my face and I will never forget that pain. Plus a couple of other...

Depends. If we camp in spring (which is not often because it's usually too cold to be that fun), I'll harvest nettles. Every couple of years I make it a point to go camping during clamming season so we can camp near the beach, dig clams and cook them on the campfire. And there's usually...

I don't even want to contemplate camping without coffee. Ok, fine, living without coffee. *shudder* For car camping I bring along my frech press. As long as you can boil water you'll have gourmet coffee in 5 minutes. French presses are brilliant and easy and make fantastic coffee. I drink it...

Very little. I never had much money to spend on vacations so I got the cheapest tent available at Fred Meyer our first year and the next cheapest one a few years later when it broke beyond repair. It's lasted for 7 years now - 9x16 and cost about $50. But, it only gets used 2 weeks out of the...

I feel like we can actually swim in a lake, but not so much an ocean. When we lived on the coast in GA, the beaches were great, but it was more playing in the waves than actual swimming, and worrying about undertow and all that wasn't fun. Here in Washington, the ocean is too cold to swim in...

Western Washington has a few decent ones in the Cascade Mountains. Snoqualmie Falls is less than an hour from Seattle so it's a huge tourist draw. I like Wallace Falls, with a long hike along a river along a well maintained trail (lots of elevation gain) and a lower falls and an upper falls...

Best experience ever... hard to pick... one year in early April the weather was unusually warm and sunny - in the 70's, which just doesn't happen here for a couple weeks in a row, and the forecast was amazing, so I impulsively asked for vacation time, took the kids out of school for a few days...

For years it’s just been me and my 2 kids, and I love it. It’s pretty much our only type of family vacation. The last couple of years though we’ve taken some of their friends (1 friend each) and I admit I like that too, because those kids are like family, for one thing, and for another, when...

Freshly cut firewood, campfires, cedar trees, the musty earth smell when it just starts to rain, pine trees... And this isn't really outdoors, but we have a small closet that I store all of our camping gear in that we've used for years that has the most amazing smell that never goes away - dirt...

You just let me know if you're coming to Western Washington and I'll tell you where this place is. :tinysmile_twink_t2:

I love the San Juan Islands and that's exactly when we go - in September after kids have gone back to school. When my kids were younger, I'd just write a note for them and we'd do a long weekend. Moran State Park has a few campsites right on a lake that are fantastic. We always camp near water -...

To my father it wasn't really camping unless you hiked at least a mile to your site away from the car and slept in a tent. To me, it's sleeping in a tent in an established campground (car camping). To others, it's being in an RV or a trailer. I think it all works. After all, we're not in a hotel. :)

Hash, cooked in a cast iron skillet over a campfire so it gets a smoky flavor. Diced potatoes, onions and red peppers, with a little truffle salt and pepper, or paprika. Then, poached eggs served on top, with a side of cheesy grits. That gets us going. Oh, and French press coffee.

I love it all. My first favorite moment is when we get there and get the tent set up and supplies unpacked and realize we've left it all behind. Then there's the end of the day when we come back from hiking or swimming and build a campfire and start to cook dinner and eat it around the fire...

I prefer backpacking but I could never convince my kids it would be fun so I've stuck to car camping. I like quiet and privacy, so I have a few tricks I've used that usually work. We camp during the week and not on weekends. I research campgrounds extensively, including calling them up...

I always wear a helmet now even though it took time to get used to, since no one wore one when I was a kid. But, as soon as I had my own kids and taught them to ride bikes, it became something I always did, like using a seat belt. I remember skidding on gravel on a road shoulder once as a teen...