A Quick Getaway
Sometimes it is good to just pack up and get away from the house and all the reminders of things you should be doing – like cleaning and filing paperwork. Sometimes, you need to get out of the house to clear your head and regroup ready to tackle everything again. You don’t need to go far, just away. And this is what we did this weekend. We packed up the car with all the camping gear and went 20 minutes down the highway to a great camping spot by the beach. An hour later and we were all set up and sitting back with a cold drink and some home baked snacks.
You could spend a bit of money and stay in a nice hotel but really, quick getaways don’t need to cost a lot and we find that camping is more relaxing as there is no pressure to do anything, it is an activity in itself and this way we don’t need to stress about where the money is coming from to fund our spur of the moment flight from daily humdrums.
Unfortunately a major storm had just passed over the coast, an ex-tropical cyclone actually and had left a pretty decent path of destruction all down the east coast of Australia. The beach was inaccessible as the raging ocean had taken a big chomp out of the beach and it was a 10metre sand cliff to get down on to the beach, which was so choppy and washed out that it really wasn’t worth it anyway. But that’s ok, I had come prepared.
When you travel, especially with kids, it is always a good idea to have a few things up your sleeve, or in my case a bag full of tricks and entertainment. I packed some colourful foam shapes that the kids could play with – they can be traced, dunked in water, painted with, tell stories with them or if so inclined just chew on them. I also had bubbles, glow sticks, colouring in, nail polish, stickers, books, a torch (you would be surprised at how much fun kids can have with these) and special gooey yummy treats like this m&m-topped brownie. We also had a few movies loaded on the laptop just in case but didn’t need to pull these out which was a bonus.
We had sunshine, rain and wind, a 3 year old scream-bloody-murder incident with a giant toad one night on the way back from the toilet block, lots of friendly fellow campers, the kids played in the dirt, they ran naked, night time glow-stick giggles, we saw a shooting star, the beach was a no-go, but the playground down the road was great, my bike chain broke but I got extra exercise walking it back to camp. It was great to go out in the great outdoors, even if it was in our own ‘backyard’.
