Camping seems like such a pain. You spend days packing everything you might need so you can have the comforts of home while sleeping in the dirt. It really doesn’t make sense and sometimes I wonder what the point of it is, since our ancestors couldn’t even dream of wall-to-wall carpeting and central heat and air, yet we go through all this effort to live primitively. BUT then again, simplifying the stuff, and getting off the grid does help push the reset button in a way that hotel vacations don’t.

My dad and uncle Bob have been brothers-in-law since 1969 and they’ve been dragging us through the dirt since my cousins, brothers and I came along in the 70s. Somehow they settled on this little known campground in the High Sierras east of Fresno and we’ve been going back to Dinkey Creek almost every year. Sometimes there are tons of us–my cousins, aunts, uncles and friends, and sometimes, like this year its a small crew, the #DinkeyDiehards. Just me, my kid, Desmond the doodle, my cousin Liz, my dad and her dad, Paleo Bob. We had the sweetest family staying in the site next to us and their son did his best to wear the dog out and Cecily basically moved in with them.

Everything seemed extra colorful this year and it was a wonderful few days barefoot earth-grounding amongst the sequoias, dipping in the granite pools, eating It’s-Its on the store bench and Cecily even went foraging for wild strawberries with our camp neighbor. Sorry, not sorry for all the soulful Desmond pix, it turns out he’s the world’s greatest camping dog.