I woke up early Saturday morning to get all of the groceries, then came home and prepped the food and packed the cooler. Then we loaded up the car and we were ready to go. I did pretty well with the packing, we each had one duffle bag (not crammed), pillows/blankets, tent/air mattress, camping chairs, one cooler, two reusable bags of food, and our "camping kit". Not too bad for three people (including the baby!). Oh yes of course, and her diapers. Even still the car was pretty full.
When we got to our site we were pleased with the proximity to the washrooms. We chose site number 466. It was good for what we wanted but now that we have been there and looked around I would have chosen one of the sites that are on the bend on in "the birches" section as they provided a significant amount more privacy.
Once we unloaded our gear and set up the tent within minutes there was a heavy down pour. I was thankful that the tent was already set up so we had a place to wait it out that wasn't the car. Thankfully the rain only lasted about 15-20 minutes.
When the rain was done we opened up our "camping kit" that was a wedding gift from two of our bridesmaids. We had not had a chance to use it yet so it was fun to see what they put in it. We did not pack anything extra knowing that they probably thought of everything and they pretty much did! After going through the box we made our first camp fire and made our dinner (stew and fresh bread). It was very yummy. Saturday night we had some friends over to the site for some marshmallows and drinks.
Rylee gave us a really hard time when it was time to go to bed. She just wanted to play and didn't want to settle, especially since it was a new place and all with LOTS to look at and do. I finally got her to sleep in the Moby Wrap after doing to creative walking around the site a number of times. However, when we went to go to bed she thought that was time to wake up and play! It took about an hour to get her to go back to bed since she thought it was fun to play around and be silly. We finally all got to sleep around 11pm.
At 2 am Sean woke up with a migraine and was quite sick. The man snoring in the tent next to us woke me up then I had to pee. Rylee of course woke up when we both got up so she was wide awake. We tried everything to get her to go back to sleep but she just wasn't having it. During this time she threw her head back and smashed the back of her head on the bridge of my nose. I thought for sure it was going to be bleeding and that I would have two black eyes the next day, although I did not get any black eyes, the pain is STILL there and the area is very very tender. Rylee FINALLY went back to sleep around 5:30am and woke again for the day at 8.
We made our breakfast (yogurt parfaits) and ate them in our camping chairs. Sean did a timmies run for us and the sites around us so I had a bit of quite time just sitting and relaxing.
Once he got back we got changed and headed out to explore some trails. We pretty much hiked all morning.
Lunch was sandwiches and vegetables. After lunch we tried to get Rylee down for a nap. It took 1 hour and 45 minutes to get her to sleep and we all passed out for 1 hour and 15 minutes. It was a much needed nap all around! After the nap we hit up the splash pad...
Once we dried off and changed it was time to make dinner. Typical hot dogs on the fire. I also had salad to go with them. I had just eaten my hot dog and then had two bites of my salad (it was really good). Rylee lost her balanced and tripped coming within inches of the fire. I leaped up to catch her (sending the salad every where) and managed to pull her back just before she fell back into it. She was totally fine and didn't even know anything happened. My salad, however, was not salvageable. BOO! I ended up having a few of the left over veggies from lunch instead. Needless to say from that point on we moved our chairs back away more from the fire to give Rylee more walking room.
After dinner we went for a hike to the beach and saw A LOT of groundhogs.
We went back to the site when it was getting dark and made some more marshmallows. We knew it would take a while to get Rylee to bed so we started at 9pm and we were right. It took over an hour to get her to sleep but at least she slept through the night. Sean and I did wake a number of times from the loud snoring taking place next door but otherwise night number two was a success!
This morning we packed every thing up and were out of the campgrounds by 9am. We had all the laundry done and everything put away by noon (Rylee passed out the minute we got home for a wonderful 2.5 hour nap that allowed us to get it all done). A big part of the speedy clean up was that I am pretty organized and put all the dirty clothes in one bag, all the dirty dishes in another, and so forth. Sean cleaned off the tarp and we let the bottom of the tent dry out.
Over all we consider the weekend to be a big success. One thing that we will need to invest in for sure is a bigger tent. It is fine for just Sean and I but by the time you add Rylee and her duffle bag and her diapers + diaper bag it made for a very squished camp (hence the "broken" nose). I think it would have been much easier to move around if the tent had been bigger.
I am also very proud to report that I staying on track all weekend! Again, good planning and healthy food options were a key to my success. I also made sure we had LOTS of water to drink.
I would definitely recommend Fanshawe Conservation Area to people with families as there are a lot of things to do. The only down side I would say is that the map of the park is really difficult to read, although, that could have just been us ;). There were a lot of kids there this weekend but that was to be expected since it was a long weekend. Overall the noise wasn't too bad but as previously mentioned I would choose a more secluded spot next time.
