Camping in Virginia Beach

Seeing as we have been back from camping for over a week now, I figured I should post our vacation pictures.

We closed on the house on Tuesday night, headed over there for a pizza picnic and then back home to finish packing. We were on the road bright and early Wednesday morning!

We had our customary sodas in the car and at one point I went to put mine back into the cup holder and it flipped out of my hand! Somehow it flipped upside down into the cup holder.. so all of the soda just pooled in it! I got lucky.

Delish.

We had the car LOADED up. Our bikes on the back, a big cooler, a fridge (dorm sized..), a boogie board, two tents, etc.


For the most part, the next two days were just spent biking and going to the beach. It was HOT! I've never been to a beach that hot. Whenever we went while I was growing up, it would be Myrtle Beach, SC in the spring or Hampton Beach, NH/York Beach, ME in the summer. I was definitely glad that John's mom let us borrow her beach umbrella.

Sadly, the hurricane was passing by us, so the waves were REALLY strong and big. I only boogie boarded for one day. John went out the next day for a little bit, but preferred to body board. On our last day, Saturday, the water was actually closed to swimming because the undertow was so strong.


For those of you wondering how we cooked:
A camping stove. We got this from my dad. It is perfect. It works just like a normal gas stove. I posted our menu before I left, so you can see what I made on it. This happens to be the spaghetti and garlic bread.

Pancakes & Sausages for breakfast.

We kept a lot of cold foods in the fridge. John used this in his dorm at school and it works, so why not? This way we didn't have to worry about things going bad and buying ice all of the time. It worked like a charm.

We had cheese, milk, OJ, sodas, apples, etc.

We brought like 5 water bottles with us and just refilled them on the site and stuck them in the freezer to keep them cold. You can also see our "ice packs" (gladlock containers of water/ice) that we put in the lunchbox cooler to bring to the beach.

I kept all of our dry food goods in a large tote container. (Spaghetti, PB, jelly (unopened), Bisquick, mustard (unopened), baked beans, etc.)

All of our snacky foods were kept in another container.

Our table set up for supper.

We bought a large easy-up tent before we left and also got the screen to go with it. This was awesome for keeping the bugs out and sort of defining our campsite away from the path. We were SO glad that we bought this when, on Saturday night the hurricane passed through and it POURED for hours. The ground got muddy, but it was so nice having space to stay dry.

Lastly, remember when I made the curtains and said I was also working on another project? Well this is it:


Its a picnic table bench cover! I folded a plastic table cloth in thirds and just sewed up the edges. I used a couple of shoe strings that John had lying around to make ties to keep the cover on the bench. Total for this project: $0! (I got the table cloth from my mom- it had melted in a spot & she didn't use it on the table anymore.)

These are great for keeping the benches dry (easy to wipe off any water), and adding a little bit of cushion. You could always stuff these with batting if you wanted them even cushier.


Until next time, I leave you with this: