Oh the Cuteness!

How-Tuesday time! This week I have a fun camping dessert, a cute bag to sew, and a site full of photography tips. These campfire hobo eclairs look fun and delicious! Learn to make them here .  This super cute tote bag is a free pattern on an adorable blog! Check it out here.   This site has tons of photography tutorials for all levels of people. Go try it out here.

A little while ago Johnny took me to the outskirts of my new town to go on a lovely hike to see some waterfalls. Uvas Canyon County Park  is about 3 miles of looping trail and is absolutely gorgeous! Click on the link to go to the Bay Area Hiker page, it has tons of great info on the park. In the winter the water is too high to get very close to a couple of the falls, but this makes them far more spectacular. As the water was low enough for us to hike to the top or bottom of all of them we were able to get lots of great photos! It was so incredibly beautiful and I highly recommend this place for hikers and campers alike as there's an awesome campground next to the river and we are planning a nice weekend trip there soon! (Also, as always, there's a ton more photos on my flickr here .)  There's lots of fallen trees across the river, this one swayed a lot!  It was so hot that day and so nice to chill in the pools.  Admiring the majesty...

As soon as the weather got warm I decided it was high time I took Johnny on his first ever camping trip! We went to the same campground I used to frequent with my parents when I was a kid, San Simeon State Beach. It was just a one-night trip, but we had a blast and we already have a big trip planned for each month of summer. We spent a lot of our time out on the beach collecting moonstones and other pretty rocks, and in the evening, as well as the next morning, I made us a campfire meal to end all campfire meals! I'm hoping some of my campfire cooking tips and tricks will encourage you to forego the gas-powered grill and try it yourself. We brought the little old Skotch cooler and filled it with plenty of ice and some simple ingredients: whole rainbow trout, a half package of bacon, half carton of eggs, a couple pats of butter, and two ears of white corn. In addition to the perishables we brought lemons, potatoes, and spices: Dill, black pepper, grey salt, and Trader J...

In the first part of this post I told you all about the good times and creepy fun I had exploring the abandoned amusement park next door to our campground. Little did I know that when I returned to the campground Vanessa would have yet another surprise for me. She said there was a neighborhood of abandoned houses just outside the campground, and we should go check it out. *Swoon* I couldn't get out there fast enough! And they literally were right next door. We had to climb over a tiny fence to get into the neighborhood, and I couldn't believe what I saw. About a dozen houses, all in various states of decay. Their styles and colors and the objects strewn about placed them as being built in the 1960's. Some were nearly perfectly intact on the outside, while others were flattened. It almost looked like the whole group had slid down the hill in a weather-related catastrophe, and that's the only theory we have going because I couldn't seem to find any information on t...

Probably my favorite adventure/party of the summer was my friend Glen's birthday camping trip. Every year since he was pretty young he's been going to a strange little independently operated campground near Guerneville on the Russian River called Camp Outback . This place is magical for so many reasons. We got a huge campsite with a ton of people, I got to rent some amazing camping equipment for free, we stayed up all night playing games around the campfire, and we spent the entire second day kayaking on the river. Could it get any better? Turns out, yes. I don't know if too many people know this about me (Hello, internet!), but I've always wanted to be an urban explorer, and I love photographing abandoned buildings. But I've never been brave enough to go traipsing around private property, and finding abandoned spaces that are open to the public is pretty rare. But not at Camp Outback. After we got back from the river we got to go explore the abandoned amusemen...