Dosewallip Camping

Our first camping trip of the summer was a success!

We tried out Dosewallip State Park for the first time, and truth be told, when we pulled up to the campground, Scott and I both were pretty disappointed. Our site was mixed in with the RVs, backed up to the camp entrance road, and had very little shade. With the burn ban going on right now, we took one look at the campsite and was like... this is going to be lame....

Looks can be deceiving though! We ended up pushing our tent way to the edge of our site to get some partial tree cover and then we were fine! Between our site and the main road was a clump of trees where we set up a hammock and the girls (especially Nora) had a ton of fun playing around in. And, since the set up around us was pretty open, it meant the kids ended up having a BLAST biking around the campground and eventually become buddies with all the other kiddos near us and did laps around our little area over and over again.

We had booked this site knowing that clamming was nearby and we definitely took advantage of it - twice! In our 13 years living in this area, I'm shocked that this was our first time clamming because it was ridiculously easy to do - you barely needed a shovel or rake, you could pretty much just use your hands and uncover your limit of clams (40) and Oysters (3) in about 5 minutes. We took our time though and explored around, and Scott dug around enough that we even got a geoduck. Because we were clamming in the summer months, we made sure to cook everything really well and made some super yummy dishes. We just needed some nettle leaves and Scott would have been thrilled to be living off the land!

A nice perk of the campsite that we didn't know when we booked is that it is located next to the Dosewallip River. We saw signs for the trails so went to check it out and was so glad we did because the water was nice and cold and fun to splash around in when it got hot in the afternoon.

Our old friends the Mackies were also able to join us for a day and it was such a nice treat to hang out with them again! Evie and Vivienne were thick as thieves, while Winston was doing biking tricks around the campground. Baby Cecily is no longer a baby and is already four years old, but she was such a trooper and was biking with all the kids with no fear of going down hills or anything. She and Nora are the same height and they became fast friends, in part, I think, because Nora was happy to be able to boss someone around!

We left early Sunday morning to beat the rush, and noticed lots and lots of other places nearby that we didn't get to check out like hiking trails in the Olympic National Park/Forest and the Hamma Hamma oyster company. We'll put this campground in our rotation of places to camp at for future reference!