Camping Weekend and a Birthday

A three day weekend away with our caravan club buddies made for a fun weekend.  We traveled to Kaitoke Regional Park, Upper Hutt, a lovely natural area full of camping areas tucked here and there amongst the trees and down by the river bank. and had a very enjoyable and social time indeed.  Most of our caravan club members arrived on Friday afternoon, and we soon settled in to our chosen area.  There were plenty of other groups enjoying this camp too, caravans motorhomes and plenty of tents were erected, we noticed.  Lots of kids on bikes and plenty of dogs too, sadly many of the owners were not obeying the rules and were letting their dogs run free.

Here we are for the weekend

Our Beautiful Birman Gemma is very comfortable being a caravan cat.  When she is not snoozing, she loves to check for birds through the windows.  She spotted two mallard ducks waddling by and got rather excited.  Because of dogs running loose we only took her  outside for short periods and under close control with her harness and lead as we were sitting in our camp chairs.  My main concern was to keep a close watch out for any dogs sneaking around our caravan.

Gemma tucked up in the corner having a snooze

It was my birthday on Saturday so I had taken some goodies to share with everyone for morning tea.  Store bought fruit cake, and some home made ginger crunch slice.  I always double the icing recipe to pour over the ginger slice base, as I like it nice and thick, so yummy.

Birthday morning tea

The Saturday evening bonfire on the river bank was the highlight of the weekend, I thought.  A couple of the men had been down early and manhandled a lot of large rocks to build a fire pit, and we had several bags of  firewood to keep it burning.  And what would a camp fire be without marshmallows to toast?  So delicious!  And ours certainly wasn’t the only fire crackling away, there must have been a dozen or so right along the river bank. As the evening drew to a close I was serenaded with a chorus of Happy Birthday!

Robin toasting some marshmallows

We were all up bright and early the next morning to drive to Aston Norwood for Sunday breakfast.  Very tasty it was too, bacon, eggs – cooked as requested, fried, poached or scrambled,  toast and the best hash brown I had ever encountered! 

Jenny and Robin, Murray and Sue

A while ago we had purchased a container of rather fancy tea, Russian Caravan Tea, which seemed rather fitting.  About time we started using it, I thought, so I brewed a small pot for our breakfast one morning.  Must confess that we generally use tea bags, but this loose tea was delicious.

We had a very busy weekend with lots planned, but I still found time to do a little handwork.  Not much, to be honest, but every little bit helps.  Did a few rows of knitting, and hand stitched the little stick legs and eyes on my latest bunch of  birdy blocks.

More colourful birds

As often happens it started raining on Monday when it was time to pack up and head for home.  Not too hard, just fine misty rain.  We said our goodbyes and off we went on our 110km journey home.  And waiting for me at home were several nice birthday cards, two of them including gift cards to buy myself a birthday treat, and another one with some pretty blue patchwork fabric.  With special phone calls as well, I was well and truly spoilt.