Sand, Sawdust and Salty Air

One thing we love about Washington is all the different festivals that are held throughout the year. It provides great family fun and usually free/ cheap activities for the entire family. We have been lucky enough to experience several different ones. Some we have enjoyed more than others. Our latest one was awesome! We would recommend a stop at the Sand and Sawdust festival that is held in Ocean Shores the last weekend in June! Ocean City State Park is less than 10 minutes out of the city so it makes a fun camping weekend.

We found this little guy to bring home to remind us of a great weekend!

The Sand and Sawdust festival was pretty cool. There were over 40 chainsaw artist participating this year. You could walk through their tents and watch them working and also browse pieces of art they were selling. Such amazing talent. It was really neat seeing all the different styles of the artists. The detail on some of these pieces was just incredible. Best to get there early as it became very busy!!

While the chainsaws were set up in the city center, sand artists were out on the beach. We watched the amateur sand castle contest for a bit and also several people competing in the sand drawing contest.

We love the huge sandy coastline at Ocean Shores. You can park right out on the beach and spend the entire day. It is such a long coastline that even during prime times you can still have tons of space to yourself! We set up our beach tent, played in the sand and flew kites.

The kids have a much later bedtime than normal when we are camping! So both nights we spent time on the beach watching the sunset before bed. Ocean City State Park is great because there is a trail right to the beach from the campground.

It is hard to end your day in a bad mood when this is your view!

This was our second camping trip of the year and I would say it went smoothly for the most part! Aspen woke up screaming and crying the first night with a night terror. To avoid waking the entire campground I hopped in the truck with her. We spent the night sleeping in the truck. When I say “we” I actually mean Aspen…Aspen slept! Truck seats are not meant for sleeping and I think I slept for all of 2 hours. Haha. Thankfully the second night was just fine except for the air mattress. This time we made sure the valve was attached but apparently there was a hole! So once again we enjoyed the rocky ground! No more air mattress for us. We give up!