So last week, I fucked up and forgot to pre-write and schedule a blog post. But, thats all good, cause sometimes we need a break to recharge and get the creative juices flowing again. Also, last week I went camping with my girlfriend and some of my family for my cousin’s birthday. So, I was stressed out and freaking out to make sure I had all of our camp equipment ready and prepped for the weekend.

Shot on: Fujifilm XT-30II, XF 16mm F/1.4

For this camp trip, it was relatively close to home. It was actually about 20 minutes away from my girlfriend’s house. We camped at Del Valle Regional Park in Livermore. Overall, its a cool spot to camp if you want to keep it relatively local and to have an easier time coordinating a group to go. The camp is connected to a lake, so there was a bunch of stuff to do. Sadly, I didn’t capture much from the actual campsite. All of the photos featured in this post are going to be from the boat fishing trip we did.

We all arrived on Friday afternoon. The weather wasn’t bad at all that weekend, it was in the low to mid 80’s during the day; which is just perfect for us folks from the SF area. When we arrived, we setup camp. It was pretty annoying, because the dirt was really soft and was pretty difficult to secure the stakes into the ground. We moved our tent around 3 times until we found a decent spot. For dinner, I cooked up some KBBQ and definitely went overkill on the amount of meat I brought. Then we just hung out around the campfire and drank all night. At night it got pretty damn chilly inside the valley. I normally always run hot, but I was actually cold at night. This was the first time I actually slept inside of our sleeping bags.

Saturday morning, my girlfriend and I woke up at 5:30 AM to go rent a boat and go fishing with my cousin for his birthday. I was absolutely mildly hungover that morning with a slight headache. I was slowly rethinking my decision to get on this boat. But, I am so glad I stuck with it, because I actually got to drive the boat. We were out on the lake for about two hours. We had a couple minor hiccups with the boat, but we got that all sorted out and made it back safely. I didn’t fish because I don’t have a license, but my cousin did. Majority of the time he wasn’t getting any bites. On our way back to the dock, he started to get lucky. Then at the last minute, he caught one. Though it was a small fish, it was still a catch to get on the boards and start off his birthday with a W.

We get back to our camp and my girlfriend and I took a quick nap, because we had to leave camp for a while to go to a baseball game. We totally forgot that we bought these tickets from her work a while back. So, we left camp and went to her house to freshen up and head to the game. This was the final Battle of the Bay series, so we got to see the A’s represent Oakland one last time before they set off to Las Vegas. Our original plan was to show up for a while and leave the game around 6 PM to get back to camping. NOPE, that didn’t happen. I wanted to leave early enough so it wouldn’t be dark driving into the valley. I kept telling my girlfriend that it is going to be dark by 8:20ish, but NO she kept insisting it would be dark at 9. So we head back to her house and grabbed some things at the store before heading back to camp. We checked to see if the gates close to the camp; the website said 10 PM. As we are driving to camp, the sun is already setting and got really dark at like 8:20, just as I said. Then I get a phone call from my auntie that stopped by camp to visit us and drop off some food and hang out. I figured it might’ve been important because, there is absolutely NO phone service in the valley. So, I listened to the message she left and she said that the camp gates close at 9 and everyone was worried if we would make it back on time. So now I have to drive in the dark AND rush to make it back on time. Sure enough, we made it back with 10 minutes to spare. I am not really the one to say “I told you so”… But, I digress.

We wrapped up Saturday night the same way with hanging out and drinking all night by the campfire. Sunday morning, we all just woke up and broke down our campsite and packed up all our stuff. We all left at around noon. My girlfriend and I just headed back to her house, took a shower, and slept the whole day. All in all, it was a fun, easy, quick camp trip. Looking forward to doing it again next year.

Enjoy some of these pictures from the weekend. ‘Til the next one.

Zam Fam Camp ‘24.

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