Camping is not only for summertime. The most fabulous thing about homeschooling is that you can pack up the van and get out into nature on a Sunday without a care for when you get back.
A few weeks ago, the Hub and I packed out van to the gills and took the kiddos to the giant redwoods in the Santa Cruz mountains.
Camping is such a fantastically-frugal activity, if you have the gear. The campsite is only $35 a night. Big Basin even allows dogs so the pup came along. And in November, all the schoolchildren are back in class and vacationers have gone home. In the entire huge campground, there were only a few other groups of campers. The owls were louder than any campers. We felt like we were all along up there, just the way we like it!
Big Basin is nestled on the west side of the Santa Cruz mountains, facing the ocean. There are miles and miles of trails weaving their way between majestic redwood trees that tower higher than the largest skyscraper and are older than any building in our state. Everything in the giant redwoods leaves you in awe. Because it is quite moist in Big Basin, the kids also found banana slugs which are amazing creatures that look like a young, wet, yellow banana.
If your kids are teenagers, all you have to do is drive and cook. They choose where to set up their tents and help with all the unpacking. And then, here is a wonderful part. Then they head off hiking and leave you and your husband to hang out around the campfire with the dog.
Here is the amazing part: my son decided to forgo the tent and slept in a tree. Not in the branches, but actually inside the hollowed out trunk of a tree that was hundreds of feet tall. My daughter pitched her tent right in the middle of a tree circle. Redwoods form daughter trees that encircle them and grow up to replace an aged tree. Those circled of trees are even more special because all the roots of redwood trees in a forest connect – they actually communicate with each other through the forest, under the earth. THAT is a homeschool moment!
We were only gone for one night, but the depths of relaxation everyone discovered out there under redwood trees was more profound than the trees are old.
So if you homeschool in the San Francisco Bay Area, consider a trip to Big Basin, even if it is just for a day of hiking. Let your children look up and roam about and really smell and feel and experience the wonder of a redwood forest.