You were right. Camping was fun. (Part 1)

So I'm a camper. I camp now.

We had a beautiful weekend, and I would highly recommend the campground at which we stayed, if you are anywhere in Southern California and are planning to camp ever.

It is called Heise Park, and is about five minutes outside of Julian, CA, which is in San Diego county, about 90 miles inland from Oceanside. (But if you leave Orange County too late on a Friday night, it may take you three hours to get there.)



Our friends, who have a trailer, thought we would enjoy Heise Park because it has several brand new REAL log cabins in one part of the campground. We, who do not have a trailer, stayed in one and all agreed: they were AH-MAZING.



Ours had two separate rooms. One room had a full-sized wood cot, a square table with 2 picnic benches, and a gas heater disguised as an old black stove.

The other room had two sets of wood bunk beds with another table and two chairs.



Curtains, a lovely front porch, and hand-crank windows were more charming features.

I believe the sites with cabins were around $50/night. Now that is my kind of camping, if you don't have some sort of trailer.



Here is our view from the porch.

Awesome, huh?

The most stressful things for me were not what I expected. I was okay with the dirt, the food situations, and the work involved. But the lack of hot water was not fun. The bathroom area was far from our particular cabin, and it didn't have hot water. So the first night, we trekked through the cold night air to the bathrooms, and I washed my face in ice water. Also, I didn't know it was going to be BYOT, the T being for towel. So I air-dried, and my hands took a while to recover. Brrr. The next morning, we decided to venture even farther to different bathrooms which did have hot water.

And secondly, we discovered poison oak outside our cabin, just minutes after the six kids were tromping around in the bushes and collecting leaves from various plants for leaf rubbings. I was seriously stressed about one of them getting poison oak. And kicking myself for not looking around first. OK, I still am a little stressed, after I read on WebMD that the skin can start to blister a week after exposure. My kids and skin issues...deep breaths.

But it was fun seeing the wildlife. This area is known for its many wild turkeys. We saw lots of these.

And these. Also wild turkeys, but way cuter.

I really loved our day venturing out to Julian and going apple picking. That day will be my next post. Love the apple picking. My bowl runneth over with apples right now.

Thanks for all the great and funny and encouraging and practical comments on my camping post last week. I really appreciated them, and took advice from many of you! Thank you thank you.

And if you didn't get my initial reference at the very top, well, this is a bit how I feel about camping. Enthusiasm mixed with a lot of ignorance inexperience.

Have a great day and stay tuned...I have a LOT more to tell, and a lot more pictures too.