camping — A family of five sharing simple, minimalist living and Pacific Northwest adventuring

We had been planning for weeks. The camp reservation at Humbug Mountain State Park in southern coastal Oregon was booked; we’d even bought a new tent and sleeping bags this year to add to our camping supplies. An upgrade from our 8-person tent that the Mr. and I bought before we even had kids, our new 10-person tent had a room divider and blackout walls. The one thing it wasn’t, as we’d find out the hard way, was waterproof.

The night before we headed out, we checked the weather one more time. For weeks, the forecast predicted the perfect camping weather—around 60 degrees and sunny. But this time, we learned it was going to rain for the next three days, for 3/4 of our trip! At the last minute, we put in a pickup order at a local sporting goods store for a pop-up canopy with a zip-up netting and decided we would keep our plans but bring a few more games to play under cover from the rain.

We arrived at our campsight, set up fairly quickly, and decided to have sandwiches for dinner. Right after we built a fire for s’mores, the downpour announced its arrival by putting out our fire and soaking our campsight. After three returns home to fetch forgotten items and several hours of driving and wound up kids and water everywhere, I told Kelley, “I just want to go to bed and be done with the day.” So, we got ready for bed and started to get in our sleeping bags when I noticed water dripping on my inflatable pillow. We looked around and our hearts sank as we discovered water was coming in at the bottom seams of the tent and forming pools all around our sleeping gear. Defeated, Kelley scurried to throw our sleeping mats and bags back in the car while I hunted down a motel with a vacancy. We pulled into our motel six miles down the road around 9:45 the first night; we never even got to sleep in our tent.

Sometimes, things just don’t go according to plan. It doesn’t matter how much in advance you investigate conditions and prepare, or how much gear you have—there are going to be times when you just have to abort mission. As we settled in our beds in our motel room from the 1950s (managed by, as it turned out, a fellow Birmingham, Alabama native!), our middle son complained because he didn’t understand why God didn’t help us. He’d kept saying as we frantically packed up our tent, “We can just ask God for help; He says He’ll help us.” To him, sleeping in a dry motel rather than our tent wasn’t the kind of help he expected.

We had a family meeting that night and discussed that when plans don’t work out, oftentimes it’s either God’s protection over our lives from something we may never even find out about, or it’s because He knows what we actually need and has something better in mind for us. In this case, it might have been the former, but it was definitely the latter.

If we hadn’t gotten rained out, we would never have decided to drive down the coast to the redwoods of California. We wouldn’t have had the unexpected pleasure of hiking through the Lady Bird Johnson grove in the rain, encountering massive trees that took our breath away with their sheer size. We wouldn’t have seen herds of elk grazing by the mountain roadside on Kelley’s birthday. We definitely wouldn’t have had beachfront views from our hotel room balcony in Gold Beach, nor would I have shared about Jesus and homeschool while combing the beach with a local young mom while our kids hunted for agates. There were little surprises everywhere, unexpected blessings surfaced out of what seemed to be a major hiccup in our plans.

Camping is fun, but it’s also a lot of work. Everything is set up and torn down repeatedly. It takes work to keep food stored at the right temp in the cooler. Activities are constantly interrupted by trips to and from the bathroom with young kids. You’re doing all your own cooking with portable cookware and then hand washing everything with a limited water supply. It’s exhausting. And we were already exhausted.

Our Heavenly Father knows what we need before we do. He knew that although we chose camping because it’s economical, what we needed was rest. So He graciously provided a way for us to experience a relaxing beachside getaway, retreating to the comfort of a warm, dry room after meandering in nature every day. Our campground was nice and cozy, but the expanse of the beach with its sparkling quartz rocks, craggy rock landforms, rushing creek beds, and driftwood jungle gyms were the perfect playground for a family of energetic explorers.

We discovered Sisters Rock with its foggy floral paths, rocky beaches, and hidden cave. We spent hours collecting agates and quartz on the shoreline of Gold Beach and played in a rushing, waterfall-powered creek on Meyers Beach, which we had all to ourselves. The kids imagined forts at the foot of giant redwoods in a forest that smelled of rain and moss. We had a picnic beachside and stood at the foot of enormous Paul Bunyan and Babe statues somewhere in Northern California. We counted elk antlers in a herd grazing roadside on our way to eat pizza delivery and watch the Hallmark channel from our beachfront room. (We were really roughing it, yeah?) We drifted to a dead sleep with the lullaby of crashing waves. We took the scenic route home and listened to the guttural bellows of sea lions piled on top of one another in a dark, smelly cave and admired them perched on jagged cliffs beside a turquoise shore.

All in all, we’re grateful our plans were foiled. We came home refreshed and with a renewed sense of peace instead of exhausted from living outdoors for four days. I would say it was a trip of a lifetime, but honestly, and more accurately, it was just another week living in beautiful, picture-esque Oregon.