Wednesday, July 1, 2015

Kern River Camping Trip - Part 1

As you know, the hubby, puppy and I went on a little camping trip this past weekend. We left Thursday morning and came home Sunday afternoon. We stayed at the Camp 3 Campground up in Kernville (about 4.5 hours north of Oceanside), which is located in the Sequoia National Forest. Ryan had been up to this area before (he takes an annual "Sasquatch Trip" with some guys and they stayed at another campground along the river for one of them), but this was my first time.

Source

Obviously we took a TON of pictures (and even a couple videos) of our adventures, so I thought instead of overwhelming you, I would break them up over a couple posts. So, without further ado... HERE WE GO!

We got out of the house around 7:15am on Thursday morning (I was up at 5am so I could get in a 5 mile run and shower before we left). I grabbed a Suja juice for Ryan and I and we hit the road.

A BIG thumbs up to Suja for sending us so many amazing juices!

The drive was pretty easy. Obviously there was traffic (mostly due to construction and a brush fire that firefighters were able to contain the evening before) through LA, but nothing too terrible. We grabbed a quick lunch once we came through the grapevine (and just in case you were wondering - it was Taco Bell :) ). We stopped to get gas and ice when we hit Kernville since we knew it would be pretty desolate by the campgrounds.


We made it to our site by 1pm, set up camp, and realized they weren't joking about the triple digit temperatures we had been seeing on the weather apps. It was rather toasty, so once we got most things set up, we headed straight to the water! The river was probably 20 yards from our site, down some rocks and through some trees (close enough to hear the rushing water while we slept but far enough away to have a little privacy at our site).

Ryan was LOVING the cooler water!

SELFIE TIME!

Up the river (to the right of our site)

Down the river (to the left of our site)

Walt isn't much of a water dog, but we wanted to get him more comfortable in it. Ryan had taken him out on a surfboard in the Carlsbad Lagoon before, but for the most part he will only go into the water if he is chasing something (a bird or another dog) and once he realizes he is in there, he jets out. My mom got Walt a life vest for Christmas so we knew this would be the perfect place to test it out!

There was a nice rock that Walt used as a pedestal to watch Ryan as he floated in the river.
A couple times he would try and drink the river water and would slide off the rock into
the river, but for the most part he was like a goat and conquered rocks like nothing!


We spent most of the afternoon and evening on Thursday just hanging out in or near the river.

Ryan wanted a selfie stick for our camping adventure, and I have to say, it came
in handy! We were able to get a little more of the background in our shots ;)

This pup HAS THE LIFE!

Oh, selfie stick shadow ;) 

For dinner we made grilled cheese and corn on the cob. If you don't know, corn is my JAM! We both gave the corn two thumbs up a piece! YUM-MY!

GET IN MY BELLY!

We cooked the grilled cheese in the cast iron on the Coleman grill, but the corn
was done right over the camp fire!

Although we didn't get a full day on Thursday, due to travel, it was still pretty amazing!

An idea of the river from the site. There were a couple
trees and some big rocks to climb down, but it wasn't
too treacherous. 


And that concludes Day #1 at the river ;) All that activity helped us sleep well in the truck bed, but we were a little freaked out to keep the back window open (which was helping with the breeze). Our camp host mentioned that the week before there was a bear that came into the camp right at our site (I guess it was due to the guy cooking some very delicious shish kabobs that the bear wanted for dinner). Thankfully there were NO bear sightings that night!

Do you enjoy camping?

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