Reminiscing about our camping trip down the coast, I realized I forgot to thank a very important work horse that we almost didn’t take with us; our good old Pack and Play!  This bad boy has been with us to Mexico, Tofino, San Francisco and beyond.  In retrospect I wish we had invested in a lighter travel crib like the Phil & Ted’s Traveller (here) particularly for air travel, but we were gifted this pack and play from my mom and we have definitely got great use out of it.

For our camping trip, we threw it in at the last moment and I’m not sure we would have enjoyed ourselves as much without it.  It JUST fit in the Westfalia between our bed and the front seats.  This allowed us to put Theo safely to bed, even when he thought he should be staying up much later and we didn’t have to worry about him crawling out of bed and hurting himself or pulling apart the van.

He did manage to grab a bag of red grapes one night and mush them all into his bedding before kindly knocking on the van door to let us know he had made a big mess (such a considerate monkey).

So thank YOU Pack and Play for fireside grown up time while camping with a toddler!!