Camping in Garden Valley

Our family loves camping, but with Matt in training all summer, it's been difficult to get any camping trips planned. We finally decided that with the summer ending we just needed to fit one in. We knew we wanted to go somewhere close because we would leave when Matt got home from work on Friday around 5:30. After looking around, we decided on the Pine Flats campground, about an hour and a half away from Boise. Unfortunately, by the time we made this decision, we could no longer reserve a campsite (you have to reserve 4 days in advance). This always makes me nervous because I don't want to drive all the way to a campsite and then have no where to stay if all the site are taken! We decided to take our chances since the website still showed there were 13 "walk up" spaces available for Friday night. We pulled into the campground around 7 on Friday night, and guess what... there wasn't a single site available. They were all either occupied or reserved. The other rotten thing was that the few camping places we had passed on the way to Pine Flats were all full too.

We weren't quite sure what to do. I knew that the campsites near Idaho City were full (I had looked and tried to reserve a site at a couple different campgrounds earlier in the week). I knew there were some campgrounds north of Garden Valley that were "first come, first served", but I wasn't sure how long we would have to drive to get to those, and who knew if they would be full by the time we got there too. We had a sad little girl in the back seat who thought she wasn't going to get to eat smores, and Tyler was just starting to get whiny after a long car ride (plus it was close to his bed time).

Well, at that moment, I made a slightly uncomfortable decision. I have a dear friend, Robin, who has a cabin on the most beautiful little piece of property in Garden Valley, right on the river. Robin currently lives out of the country, so I didn't have a way to get a hold of her right away, but I didn't think she would mind if we set up a tent on the grass next to their cabin. We decided to ask for forgiveness instead of permission and drove to her cabin and set up camp (I did contact Robin via Facebook when we got home and she was okay with us staying there!). 

We had the most lovely time. We made a fire on "fire island" so that Kylee could eat her smores. Everyone loved just sitting around the campfire and enjoying the beautiful scenery.

The next morning, Matt made us a delicious breakfast of pancakes, sausage, hash browns, and hot chocolate.

The kiddos loved throwing rocks in the river and swinging on the swings.

After breakfast and playing around Saturday morning, we packed up and came home. It was a quick trip, but was one of the highlights of the summer. So thankful to the Smith family for "letting" us stay on their property. It truly is a little piece of heaven.