Our new pop-up camper

Oh yes we did! We are now the owners of a pop-up camper. The kids love it and we took it out for it’s first trip last weekend. It is now fully broken in as it rained on us most of the weekend. I received a few crazy looks before our trip, “You’re going camping already? We never go camping before Mother’s Day. Camping? In April? In a pop-up?” I told Todd before we left that I was now slightly worried.

We headed south to Seward. We wanted to go before all the tourists arrived. We camped at a place called Miller’s Landing. If we were crazy, we weren’t the only ones. There were several other families out as well. We even saw two campgrounds with tent campers!

It was 45 degrees F and drizzling most of the weekend. Our pop-up does have heat, so between the heat and our super cozy sleeping bags, we were never cold at night. The rain was a little more frustrating. Now to be clear, the rain was pretty much a constant drizzle, not a Texas thunderstorm, gully washer type of rain. Nevertheless, the rain could have presented a problem if we had stayed at the campground all weekend, but we had some in town activities planned.

On Saturday, we took the kids on a grey whale watching tour. It sounds very touristy and it is, but all of this is new to us, so we’re pretty much doing the touristy things. And we weren’t the only ones. In fact, most of the people on the boat were Alaskans doing the same thing – doing the tourist thing before the tourists arrived. We didn’t see any grey whales, but we did see several humpback whales, sea lions, a sea otter, mountain goats and lots of birds. We also learned that ginger candy can help with sea sickness. We were all fine when the boat was in Resurrection Bay, but Audrey and I started feeling pretty quesy when the boat got out in the Gulf of Alaska. Luckily, we weren’t out in the Gulf for long and no one actually got sick. Yeah!!

When we got back to the campground that evening, the kids and I did some beach combing while Todd built a fire (in a drizzling rain – I love my former cub scout, engineer husband!) The kids and I didn’t find much beyond some mussel shells as it was high tide. I did get some cute pictures of them though. Later, we roasted marshmallows and made s’mores. By the way, the s’mores here don’t melt all over your hand. It’s too cold!!

Sunday morning we packed up and headed over to the Sea Life Center in Seward. This is an aquarium that also rehabilitates injured marine mammals and birds. They also do a lot of research on Arctic marine animals. The kids loved Woody, the 19 year old male sea lion. He’s huge!! Over a ton. I mean he’s massive! Of course, being kids, when you asked them what they liked best, it was the play boat that they could pretend to drive.

All in all, not a bad first camping experience. We have several trips planned for the summer. Here’s hoping it gets a little warmer.