Camping was awesome, even if it was a bit hot, dry, dusty, and dirty. We went to the Peninsula campground at Folsom Lake, which is about 10 miles from our house as the crow flies. However, getting to the campground was an adventure in itself. The only way to drive there involves going all the way around the lake, on narrow, curvy, hilly roads. It’s nearly a two hour drive! Thankfully, even though we didn’t make a reservation, there were plenty of sites available when we arrived around 6pm on Friday, and we scored an awesome lakeside site. (From what we could tell, almost every campsite had great views of the lake.)

We got a chance to use our REI Hobitat tent for the first time on this trip. Most. Awesome. Tent. Ever. It has pretty much straight sidewalls, and over 6 feet of headroom inside. Plenty of room for us and the dogs. Our older tent is a backpacking tent, and it is teeny tiny, with barely enough room for both of us to squeeze in. It’s a great tent too, but a bit claustrophobic. The Hobitat will be our tent of choice for car camping from now on!

The dogs did much better than I expected, and spent most of the weekend lying in the dirt next to us. They barked at a few of the people who wandered by our site, and barked whenever one of us would leave the campsite, but that’s about it. They didn’t even bother to wake up at 4am, when a racoon climbed the tree outside our tent, came back down, walked right by us, and dug through our neighbor’s trash. They weren’t exactly the watchdogs that I was expecting them to be!

I managed to find some time to relax and knit a bit too, next to the lake in the cool morning breeze. Who couldn’t relax with views like this?

What am I working on? The stole, of course. I actually made it to the border chart, and the dreaded nupps (which really aren’t that bad). [Ok, ok, so I skipped a few repeats on the middle little flowers section. I was dying. Dyiiiiiing. Could knit no more litttle flowers. And the middle section is long. Looooong. Turns out stitches stretch lengthwise really easily in 100% silk yarn. So, I skipped the last few repeats and started the border. It will be fine. I hope.]

Of course, I couldn’t knit all day, because it got HOT and both the breeze and the shade at our campsite disappeared. So, we got in the boat and hit the lake, sans knitting.

This was also the first time that we’ve taken the dogs on the boat. Mac (below) loved boating, but Newton didn’t care for it quite as much. When the boat was moving, he was not a happy dog!

All in all, a great camping trip. For you Sacramento/NorCal folks, this is a great place to camp, and probably one of the few state parks that doesn’t fill up on the weekends (due to the drive, I’m sure).