Winter Camping

All summer long the kids talked about how much they wanted to go camping, but we had no camping gear. And now we finally have our camping gear so we decided not to let the winter stop us. The girls cheered when we told them and proceeded to talk about it joyously every day. Even little Tova regaled me with all the wonderful things she was going to do in the tent. Truthfully, though, we adults were a bit nervous as the forecast wasn't great. It dips down below zero at night in Canberra now so we chose to drive a bit farther to get to the warmer coast.

Much to our chagrin we woke up Saturday to rain. And it rained and rained the whole three hour drive to Jervis Bay. The forecast called for rain in the Jervis bay area all afternoon so we prepared ourselves for a tenty afternoon. But the rain stopped just as we were arriving to the campsite. We happily set up our tent in the cool sunshine and took advantage of the window of good weather to go to the beach for a picnic. We smugly watched the storm clouds on the horizon as we ate our sandwiches on the bright white sand next to the sparkly blue bay watching a group of intrepid youth play volleyball in the water. And the sun just kept shining so we spent the afternoon walking along the coastal bluffs to the tip of the bay and playing tic tac toe in the sand.

We were all overjoyed to be out in nature after a few weeks of city life and our spirits stayed buoyant all evening as we ate our pasta and toasted our marshmallows with our fellow campers and then played games in the tent. The sun must have cheered all the winter campers as it was a rowdy evening. So rowdy that at one a.m. we finally had to let our drunk neighbors know that they had to be drunk a bit quieter.

Australians are great campers. While in Canada it is generally the more outdoorsy type that will choose to camp out here everyone who enjoys drinking beer and eating meat in a circle will camp - so everybody. I was once again blown away by the camping set ups I witnessed. I can't get over the fact that many campers have more small appliances on their camping trip than I have in my own home. While I can peek into these immense kitchen tents I have yet to catch a glimpse of the interior of one of the multi-room tents. I envision Persian rugs, inflatable couches (these seem to be quite popular here) and fairy lights. We five on the other hand were cozied up in our small (4-person) but cozy tent keeping each other warm with our tetrisesque sleep set up.

The next day was warm and sunny and after lazing around drinking cocoa we spent the rest of the morning at the beach. The air was cool but the sun was on full blast and the water was surprisingly warm and inviting so we all stripped to our underwear and went for swims. Jervis Bay just doesn't cease to impress. And this winter camping thing is turning out to be rather great.

Fellow campers

Searching for crabs

We like this sort of winter