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A little bit of heaven in our own backyard

• Published August 12, 2009

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Every now and then, it’s nice to plan vacation time and find somewhere to go that you’ve never been to before. My husband and I kicked that around a few months back when we were trying to figure out where we wanted to go camping on our vacation.

Then the time came to actually make a decision or risk losing any opportunity whatsoever to find an available campsite. And it really was almost too late. With the budget as tight as it needs to be right now, we decided to stay close to home and pitch our tent at Millersylvania State Park. If you’re not familiar with this area, Millersylvania is about a 20 minute drive from my home in Olympia.

I hadn’t been to Millersylvania in close to 20 years, and at that time, it was pretty popular with the weekend party crowd. Fortunately for us, that doesn’t seem to be the case any longer. The park was active and lively, but not rowdy. I was lucky in that I landed the last available camp site, and it was located in the hook-up area, so we had a water spigot, and an electrical hook-up. We were unlucky in that it had absolutely NO shade, and Olympia set a heat record during that week.

I prepared as much as you can prepare for something like this. We brought a screened canopy, and a hose. But, as much as you think you can prepare by bringing comforts from home, the biggest blessing was Deep Lake. A couple hours at the lake was enough to make our campsite in the sun a little more tolerable – at least until the sun pushed behind the tree line at 4 p.m. I know this because 4 p.m became my favorite time of day really quickly.

My point with all this is that you don’t always have to travel a long distance to find a great getaway. I once camped at Lake Wenatchee, and as lovely as eastern Washington is, it’s kind of nice that our total drive time was less than an hour. And yet, once ensconced in our primitive little home away from home, it didn’t really matter where we were. I guess that’s the beauty of finding a campground that seems pretty good at providing privacy and seclusion.

By the way, camping with a 2, 10, and 14-year-old is quite an experience, and they were happy as well with the ‘quick trip’ to and from our destination.