our first tampa adventure | camping at fort de soto

FINALLY getting around to blogging these camping photos! : ) We are under contract on a house, which is super exciting, but has just left us feeling a little unsettled and getting ready for yet another move. I am actually relieved, though, because I would rather get settled in our permanent home sooner than later, even if it means moving twice in three months! Keep your fingers crossed for us.

In the meantime, I hope you enjoy reading about our camping adventure at Fort de Soto. There were a few mishaps ; ) but it was totally worth it, and so, so fun.  To start, since we had never camped with kids and weren’t sure how things would go, we thought about postponing the trip for a day because the weather was supposed to be bad that first night. We were watching it all morning, and when it was time for us to leave, it actually looked okay. We figured we’d have enough time to get the tent up, and as long as we could do that, we didn’t mind the rain. But it actually ended up being pretty severe storms (thanks, weatherman), and even though we got our tent up, we didn’t stay. I’m not gonna lie, I was a total wimp, and it was a little scary. Our neighbors even invited us over to stay in their camper, which makes me think I wasn’t totally crazy.  If it had just been me and Travis, I am sure we would’ve stayed put, but you know — you make different decisions when you have the lives of your most favorite people in the whole world in your hands. I kept trying to google things like “how likely are you to get struck by lightning in a tent”, and I was not getting results that reassured me. So, we packed up the items we needed and stayed our first night in a little hotel. The kids thought it was just as much of an adventure, so it all worked out.
But seriously, look at that sky. It’s not just me, right? We started the next day super early and returned to our campsite to cook breakfast.  As you can see, the campsites back up to water, but you are also just a mile away from a beach, which is where we headed after we ate.  It was the perfect way to keep the kids entertained and wear them out during the day.  To top it off, this was Eliot’s first trip to the beach, and clearly, he loved it! The camp area has a playground as well, which we visited later in the day. We were so happy with the kid-friendliness of this whole trip!

Our third day was super fun, too.  We hit the beach again, played baseball, visited the camp store for a few items that we had used up, and toasted marshmallows.  We also ended up eating breakfast at a nearby diner.  If you are local to Tampa, you probably know about these awful little bugs called “noseeums” (get it? no – see – thems?).  Once they started biting, Travis remembered them from his childhood on the west coast with his grandparents.  Apparently, some people claim that Avon’s skin-so-soft works against them, but our regular bug spray was not exactly effective.  The boys were really unhappy, so we decided to head to the beach and grab some food on the way.
We had bought some “no nooseeums” stuff at the camp store, but it didn’t work that great either.  So, on our last day, Travis braved the bugs and cooked breakfast while the boys and I hung out and ate in the tent.  We hit the beach one more time on our last morning, and we found one of those awesome old binocular things on the pier. So fun! I couldn’t believe it was still there and still worked.

Thanks for reading/browsing the longest blog post ever.  The trip was too much fun for me to choose fewer photos.  I can’t wait to make a book of these.  And to go back, of course!  Merit has already been asking, but I think we’ll wait until noseeum season (and this crazy heat) is over.