First Landing State Park

July 22-24

We had our first family camping trip here in VA, at the First Landing State Park. It was a lot of fun despite the awful heat and humidity. The weekend we went turned out to be one of the hottest weekends this summer. The High was close to 110 degree plus humidity!!! We were so thankful to have the cool refreshing ocean to cool off in. We arrived at our camp sight after dark on Thursday night. It took us about 4 hours to make the drive to the coast. Not as close as when we lived in CA, but much closer then we were in ID!! We usually set up the DVD player for long car rides but I was getting burned out from having my kids so zoned in on the TV lately. I decided to try books on CD. We got some of the Magic Tree House books on CD from the library and we listened to them on our trip there and we listened to the BFG on the way back. The kids enjoyed them and never once complained about wanting to watch a movie instead. I enjoyed being unplugged for awhile.
Once we arrived we set up the tent in the dark with the help from out head lights and then the kids begged for a roasted marshmallow. So we made a small fire real quick and roasted marshmallows before heading off to bed. We left the marhmellows out, oops, and a friendly thief got them. RJ and Savannah were devastated. They thought for sure they wouldn't be able to have s'mores at all. Luckily there was a camp store and we were able to re-stock up on the beloved marshmallow.
I have to mention that both nights we camped were disgustingly HOT! It was so hard to sleep. I am used to camping in Idaho where it cools down at night. It is sickly how hot the night is here. We have decided camping is for Spring and Fall, I don't think we will be doing much summer camping again.
I just love this boy!
When he sees the camera he gives me the biggest grin he can muster, so cute!!

I decided to bring camp dishes instead of paper products. I really wanted to teach my kids a little about cleaning up and such. So RJ and Savannah became our offical dish washers. RJ complained at first, but then he got excited and enjoyed the washing, especially since we promised to make him a "Merit Badge."

I really wanted to go on a little hike in the morning and try out Letter Boxing (which is similar to geocaching, without a GPS). Jared didn't think hiking in the heat sounded very appealing. He was dying to check out the beach. I too, wanted to get to the beach but I really wanted to hike and I knew if we didn't go in the morning it wouldn't happen.
But we went to the beach and I dragged my heals. He said he just wanted to check it out and he promised that we would hike before lunch. I ended up being glad that we did go to the beach first. The lighting was awesome for picture taking. I didn't get a lot of great shots, the kids were always turning their backs to me, but it was fun to shoot away in the soft light.

First Landing State Park is built on a marsh land. There are a lot of trails around it. I found a letter boxing pirate adventure. It was a lot of fun! We found 10 letter boxing along our 1.5 mile hike. The kids had a blast following the clues in search of the next box.

We then went back to the camp site and had a quick lunch. After lunch we packed up for an afternoon on the beach. We stayed on the beach from noon till sunset. It was a lot of fun.

We tired catching little fish with nets. (We didn't catch any.)

We did make a sand castle.

We did take a short nap.

We did bury each other in the sand.
(I didn't have my camera but there was one point during the day that the kids found a huge hole someone had dug. They got in it and we buried them up to their neck. It was fun, wish I had the camera!)

We also learned to fish for crabs.

But still didn't catch any.

Both RJ and Savannah LOVED playing in the waves! They had a blast spending the day on the beach. We wish we were a little bit closer so we can play on the beach more often.

And I lucked out with a sunset on the water. This is one of my favorite scenes and I was bummed that we are on the East and I would be missing out on an ocean sunset. However, we happened to be in a bay and were on the east side of bay. I was so excited!!
It made my camping trip.