We were somewhat spontaneously invited to spend a long weekend in Blue Lake Springs a cute little family friendly area in Arnold, CA with my husbands family. Spontaneous for me means 2 weeks warning. My husband spent many summer vacations in the same tiny town in a similar cabin and at the same recreation center as a child. He was slightly devastated the trip fell on the same weekend he had plans to go to a bachelor party. He very rarely goes away without us. I decided to pack up the girls and go for it.
I have never taken the girls on a trip by myself before. The drive wasn’t bad. If I hadn’t gotten lost with no cell reception it would have been 3 hours. Luckily I had a map, well, a photo of one on my cell, and my oh so intelligent husband insisted I write directions down on actual paper ahead of time. Thank goodness for that! Now that I think of it I’m really glad my phone didn’t die because the image of the map in addition to the written directions are really what got us there. I left at nap time and expected Kenzie to sleep the whole way. Instead she slept for 20 minutes. So we turned up the music and Piper and I sang our hearts out while Kenzie danced along and tried to sing with her adorable baby noises. I’ve never had so much fun driving. I feel like this was a tiny window into the future. I can only imagine how fun our special girl days will be when both my girls are a little bit older.
We spent time with family at the cabin we rented, went for walks, played shuffle board, made meals together and relaxed. But most of the time the girls were in the pond at Blue Lake Springs. The air is very peaceful and the smell of pine trees help clear your head. While Kenzie napped and Piper played with her cousins I worked.
I admit we would have had an even better time if Pat was able to join us, it really is his vacation spot and felt a little bit off without him there. I wasn’t very comfortable not having cell service. Luckily we had Wi-Fi in the cabin and I was able to call Pat using What’s App while connected to Wi-Fi. Which has been a really amazing app and I’m not being paid to mention it. 🙂 Aside from no service the girls and I really enjoyed ourselves. The change in setting was a good one.
Pat and I went to Murphy’s, another tiny town down the street from Arnold, on our first baby-moon before Piper was born. Murphy’s is such a fun town riddled with wine tasting and small boutiques. Remembering this trip as we drove through brought back all kinds of memories to life before babies.
We will definitely be taking a trip back to this area as a whole family soon!
Best we could do with all the cousins!
Most of them looked like this haha!
Happy Traveling!
