Kalbarri Camping Trip

Let me start by saying that every spring during wild flower season since Paul and I moved to Australia, I've wanted to travel north through all the wild flower fields to Kalbarri, a popular family holiday destination six hours away known for its lazy river, beautiful gorge and rugged coastline.

For various reasons, this year was the first year that we actually made this happen, and even though I'm well aware of how I sometimes get let down when my expectations are high, I was nonetheless a little bit disappointed. The wild flowers weren't nearly as spectacular as I'd imagined. The gorge, while incredibly stunning, was also an incredibly stressful (and fly-ridden) place to visit with two energetic and fearless little boys. And frankly, travelling and especially camping with two children under four is anything but relaxing.

Despite these disappointments, we managed to have several moments throughout the week where we managed to have a lot of fun.

Elliot loved the campground jumping pillow!



And both boys loved the daily pelican feed.



And all the boys were really loving Elliot's new fishing pole and tackle box (or treasure box as Elliot called it)

Hiking on the coast while looking for whales and singing our new "I like to hike" song.

Elliot scoping out the competition at the kid's fishing competition.

El and I taking his catch in to be weighed. It was a 48 gram goat fish BTW.

And then El got tired of fishing and decided to make sand castles instead.

While Paul was left holding the fishing pole.

We all had a blast at the outdoor screening of Ice Age 4 while pigging out on pizza and popcorn.

We rented a little boat one morning and Paul and El had a great time fishing together.

Oliver and I decided to use the opportunity to relax and catch up on some sleep (and no Oliver was not laying in the hot sun all morning, we made a little shade cover for him out of the towel and oars).

Heading back to town after Paul and Elliot (bare-bummed) helped push the boat over the sandbars that we got stuck on when the tide was out.

Hiking with Ollie down to the gorge, perhaps not our smartest parenting decision.

How pretty!



We made it Ollie!



Get these bloody flies off of me!!!

Stop running Elliot!!!!

Oh I also should mention that our decision to buy a double screen DVD player for the trip was possibly the smartest move we've ever made. We've come so far since our pre-parenting days when we swore that we wouldn't use TV as a babysitter for our kids. Let's just say we can admit it when we're wrong.