camping trip to Malaekahana

after nap kisses

Mom, Sam and I decided to sneak away for a little camping trip while Dave is away. We wanted to check out a park we’d heard was a good, safe place to camp. While you don’t have to worry about bears or snakes here on the island, you do have to worry a bit about crime – car break-ins and noisy walk-ins hanging out in the campground. Maleakahana has 24 hr security, so we felt it would be a good place to check out. We had a wonderful time! Turns out this is the windy time of year (Mar-Apr) so we lost a lot of food to the camp chickens (who apparently eat centipedes live!). This juicy little fact is pertinent because our camping neighbors found a centipede in their tent – yikes! So those roving chickens are actually pretty helpful.

Dave didn’t grow up camping as a kid, so he is remarkable in that he’s really taking to it as an adult. However, he likes to be comfortable and have a few amenities, whereas I’m pretty happy as long as I have fire at night and coffee in the morning. So after experiencing a wild night camping out for Sam’s 2nd birthday (we selected what we thought would be a quiet spot at the end of the campground on the Marine Corps base, but our site ended up being adjacent to a group of about 40 drunk Marines who blasted Metallica until we chased them off at about 3 in the morning), and this centipede story (along with a few others I can’t mention here), Dave is really wondering about the merits of camping! Please post your reflections on memorable camping trips so he can appreciate what an indelible mark camping makes on your life 🙂 Sam has a great time and grows up more each time we go. It really seems to make him feel like a wee man. And I appreciate the opportunity to get totally filthy, sleep very little (because there’s always some intrigue going on at night, whether it’s your toddler doing 360’s in bed next to you and putting his feet in your face, or the aforementioned drunk Marines, or centipedes or whatever) and come home to really relish a shower and having all your cooking tools handy 🙂

There are a bunch of photos in the album (the picture above links you to them), and I posted a review of the campground at Outdoor Ohana, a new website Dave and I launched for like-minded families. Let us know what you think!

3 Comments

  1. amy 22 April, 2007

    we were camping at Lake Moultri in SC with a pop up camper and a tent. There was four adults and six kids. We had an famous SC summer thunder lightning storm roll in. The tent and all our stuff soaked! Four adults and six kids all were packed in to the pop-camper to ride out the storm, which was forty-five minutes. I think us adults were about to loose our minds. But everysingle one of those kids thought that was the best camping trip ever! Oh all the kids were five and under. We all ended up sleeping in the pop up that night, we had some pretty creative sleeping arrangements. so how ever the camping trip goes the kids always love it, till I think they hit the teenage years at least.

  2. Rebecca 23 April, 2007

    Sounds like loads of fun there Alli. I am sure Sammy will have fond memories. I remember when I was about his age my family went camping and I needed to cleaned off so my mother filled a 5 gal bucket from the creek and in I went. They have photos of my little curly head poking out of the top laughing away. (That habit stuck.:))

    Growing up my family would always go to Fort Wilderness in Disney World to go camping for the holidays. We had so much fun. There was room to run around and so much to do. I remember one year it was soo cold and rainy that I woke up one morning and my throat was sore and it was hard to swallow. My mother gave me a spoon full of her blackberry rum. All better and I was off. Of course I don’t imagine much would have stopped me there.

    Nick and I camped on our honeymoon it was wild and crazy fun. Another fun time was when we camped at the Grand Canyon. The winds were 60mph and our tent was flapping like an accordion and it snowed. And on top of that I had too much water, needless to say no sleep and very uncomfortable. The campground manager however had pity on us and we were in a cabin the next night. HEAVEN….. it had a heater and a bed and electricity. I do not need the Ritz just a moderate level of comfort. We even met some folks from Germany that we still keep in touch with. They are divers too. We also had some family visit while we were there. So in the end it was a big crowd and good times. We had a blast and once again laugh about it to this day.

    I camped with Jenni in Borego Springs and it was freezing at night (I am not a lover of cold nights if you haven’t figured that out yet.) Once again though we had a blast. It was a Tri club event and we had the entire holiday “garb” going. We hiked and narrated stories and had marshmallow fights. I even saw my first Tarantula in the wild. Jenni wanted me to pick it up. I thought better of it.

    Nick and I also camped our way down from Washington State to southern California. What an adventure. We saw so much on the trip. We saw Seal Cave, the Tillamook Cheese factory, the Octopus tree, and the Jelly Belly factory where I picked up a bag of belly flops. We also burned off all Nicks scrap lumber instead of throwing it away on the move. I just love the camp fire. So much so that I probably crank up the pit here at the house once a week and we sit, chat and eat out by it. I even made poor Ingrid sit out there when she came to visit. I don’t think that she minded too much, a glass of wine a bonfire and friends are the best. Remember our bonfires on the beach in Coronado. You and Jenni were social butterflies.

    All in all I have probably camped hundreds of nights in the wild either on my own, with family, with friends or with other service members and if you want my opinion. Do it. Only fond memories remain and I am always looking for more opportunities to hit the wild. My one recommendation is good gear and maybe a tempered glass French press (we have an espresso maker we picked up in Italy that we use)

    Have a blast and Camp – On girlfriend.

  3. Gramma Oli 23 April, 2007

    Do I love camping? As a kid, all three of us kiddies went camping EVERY year for 2 to 3 weeks! We have too many wonderful stories (and no bad ones) to know where to begin, so I won’t. Later you and Doug came into our lives, and were camping with us from the age of just a few months! Through all my years, family members would come to hook up with us on our trips, and we’d hike, target shoot tin cans, swim, roast marshmallows (my uncle woke up one morning with a glob in his scarce hair!), go into town for a watermelon, tell scary stories around the fire, go on excursions, and love it all. Keep it up, Alli and Dave, and don’t take occasional short-term discomforts seriously. They are part of “stories” and memories.

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