it's not a phone call: "camping" with intentional quotation marks

some scenery on our drive up

last year, we attempted camping with our 13 month old. this year, being pregnant, we decided to rent a cabin instead for our summer camping experience. as i figured it would be, camping in a cabin is much nicer. here's the place we stayed if you ever find yourself wanting to rent an affordable but great cabin on a lake.

we made the trip with our friends, alyssa and james. they stayed in a suite in the main house so that they were close, could have all their meals over in our kitchen, but didn't have to be woken up at 6am by our kiddo. it was a great set up.

we knew that going north to 100 Mile in the last week of june would probably not provide the best, beachy weather but for scheduling purposes, this was the week that worked for us 4. we brought our hoodies and fleece pants in preparation. i can't speak for a&j but i was pleasantly surprised at the weather. i guess that's what happens when you expect the worst. we had mostly cloudy days, a little sun here and there with only one full day of rain. the problem with the cooler, wet weather, however, was the mosquitoes and flies that it attracted. i asked tim if the bugs would have been better if it was later in the summer and sunny and he wasn't sure it would have been much better (though i bet in august there's no way it wouldn't be better). so i'm glad it was cooler and we could wear our long sleeves and pants (doused in bug repellent) to help ward off those little menaces. if you've ever been outdoors with me, you know that i'm a crazy anti-bug person. sure, no one is a pro-bug person but they probably don't complain as much as me. but with many afternoons of breeze and some sunny mornings, they really weren't that bad or else i wouldn't have been outside at all. and the last few days were the best.

our beach - with ben at the water's edge

at the beach, we spent a lot of time reading and ben spent quite a bit of time digging. he was deterred from constant beach-dwelling because the owners of the cabin had a dog that barked. it was a lovely dog and very obedient but the loud and sometimes unwarranted barking seemed to get ben pretty scared. some days he'd just be playing happily and the dog would be 20 feet away doing her own thing and ben would just decide he wanted to go back to the "bagin" aka. cabin. that was unfortunate. though, we were glad that ben liked the cabin, the handful of toys we brought, and of course, the curious george dvds that we could watch on tim's computer.

the craziest withdrawl that i had was from internet! i thought i'd at least be able to touch base with the world via tim's iphone but no such luck! there was no cell service this far away from 100 Mile. it was quite the detoxing experience for me. by the end of the week, we had made a couple trips into town for something to do and i logged in then but it seemed less important than at the beginning of the week. it was a good practice for me.

the greatest thing about doing this trip with friends was that after dinner, when we had put ben to bed, instead of feeling stuck in the cabin, we got to hang out, play games, eat snacks, and chat with a&j. it was lovely. i ate waaay too many Munchies. we finally mastered a difficult game that we could never get the hang of when we only played it once in a while which was fun. we had the option of satellite tv (a nice perk to cabinning instead of camping) but we never turned on the tv once.

tim and alyssa with our BBQ-ed salmon & grilled veggies

i'm sure tim's highlight was all the fishing he did with james. they went out for about 8 hours total - an hour or two at a time. they rented the canoe for $5/hr and caught fish everytime they were out. tim was excited to get ben in the boat for his first canoeing experience but after getting in the boat (while on land) and finding it to be tippy - ben was not going to set in foot in that canoe again. we got one token photo and about two minutes of our money's worth out of the that lifejacket that we purchased for the trip. haha. maybe when he's three...

it was great to have a couple fires on the beach as well. one evening that the weather couldn't decide what it was doing, we made pizza in the cabin and the boys made a fire under the protection of some trees on the beach. we ate our pizza by the lake and enjoyed the gorgeous scenery. then we made s'mores, of course. another afternoon, we had a fire for some hotdog roasting and smores again.