Cabin Life: Our First Vacation with a Toddler

How can an immuno-compromised family with a toddler who can’t be vaccinated for covid still go on a fun vacation during a pandemic? Well, that’s exactly what we did when we chose to stay in a super cute cabin in Packwood, WA. We all had a really great time despite a few hiccups the first night. It was really nice to get away for a few days and have a change of scenery. We also invited my mom and stepdad. They’ve both received their vaccines and we all went to be covid tested. I thought that this was the perfect, low-risk vacation for my family. Not to mention that the drive through Mt. Rainier National Park was beautiful too. Here’s how our experience went.

Cabin Life: Day 1

The first day we got to the cabin, Thursday, we had a really long drive and ended up leaving home a bit later than anticipated. We also had to stop at the park for a bit to let our toddler run around on the drive down. That being said, we got there around 6 at night, forgot to bring snacks (oops), and had to go grocery shopping for at least dinner and breakfast the next day. We didn’t end up having dinner until about 7:30. I was a stressed out mama that first night. We were supposed to order pizza, but by the time we finished shopping, it was too late. The biggest takeaway from this part of the vacation was that you need to make sure you ALWAYS have snacks for your toddlers. But, everything ended up working well… until we noticed our son’s door didn’t latch shut, haha!

We just recently transitioned our 2 year old to sleeping in a twin bed. So, he immediately discovered that his door didn’t latch since he is able to get out of bed whenever he wants. We were definitely on high alert. This is where my next piece of advice comes in: bring toddler proofing supplies on vacation. It didn’t exactly help with keeping him in his room at bedtime. However, bringing toddler proofing gear can help make sure toddlers at least can’t seriously hurt themselves. We had to move some things around IN his room to keep him safe too. As long as you put things back where they go; no harm, no foul in my opinion.

Toddler Proofing Essentials for Vacations:

These are the supplies we either brought with or went and bought to toddler proof the space. Obviously, we couldn’t drill into anything or leave sticky residue on anything. So, that means things like drill in drawer latches or adhesive appliance safety straps aren’t an option but these are still great toddler proofing vacation items:

• Outlet covers – These were a must for each room of our cabin since our kiddo is very active and loves to explore.
• Sliding cabinet locks – Thankfully the cabinet under the sink where all cleaning supplies were kept had knobs that could use these cabinet locks.
• Pool noodles – These are great if your toddler is sleeping in a twin bed without a railing while on vacation. We taped some together and stuck them under my son’s bed sheet to form a railing. Another option is to ask for extra towels and roll them up and do the same thing. Also ask for extra blankets to lay down next to the bed in case your toddler rolls out so that they have a padded landing.
• Door knob covers – The long door handles in our cabin wouldn’t have worked with this kind of doorknob cover. However, many cabins or vrbos do have the round door knobs that would work with these covers. It may be a good idea to bring a few of these along with you.
• Tension rod – I know this one sounds odd. However, we ended up buying a tension rod because the closet doors in the bunkbed room were the folding style. They could easily pinch little fingers. We set up the tension rod on the outside of the doors in the closet doorframe. This prevented our kiddo from opening the doors altogether and prevented the closet doors from hurting his fingers.
• Foam pinch guard – If your toddler likes exploring like ours does, these foam pinch guards can be really handy. They prevent big doors from slamming on little fingers. They can also help prevent kiddos from locking you out of rooms too.

Cabin Life: Day 1 Continued

After little man went to bed, we were wiped out, but we wanted to make sure we set up our Playstation. We brought it so that we could have family movie nights and to help keep our son occupied with his favorite shows. It was nice to be able to bring some of his favorite movies like Moana, so that he had a bit of familiarity from home. We were exhausted though, so shortly thereafter, my hubby and I went to bed. Only to wake up at 6 in the morning to the sound of thump thump thump down the hallway as our toddler let us know he was awake for the day, haha!

Cabin Life: Day 2

When we woke up on Friday, we had to essentially jump out of bed when he heard our kiddo pitter pattering down the hallway. We then had a super “nutritious” breakfast of… donut holes and yogurt. I was just frantically trying to grab things that sounded “breakfast-like” when we were at the store the night before. After we had breakfast, we headed out to Randle which is the closest town to Packwood… 30 minutes away. We were 100% in the middle of nowhere, haha! We looked up that the closest Walmart was nearly 50 miles away if that helps describe where we were. But, luckily the small market in Randle had just about everything we needed for all of the meals I planned to make while we were at the cabin.

After we got back, we went to Cruiser’s Pizza for lunch. We didn’t feel like we needed a whole pizza, so we actually ended up grabbing some of their entrees instead. I don’t know what it is about these small restaurants in the middle of nowhere, but I swear, they made the BEST patty melt I’ve ever had. My husband even said that he thinks the burger he ordered was the best burger he’s ever had. We both like burgers, so that’s saying something, haha!

Relaxing Day

Most of the day on Friday we just kinda hung out at the cabin to relax. I hung out on the couch with little man while we watched Moana. We were able to surf facebook with the wifi at the cabin, and surprisingly our cell service with tmobile wasn’t bad either!

Kiddo played with his cars and the new reusable stickers we got him. He also really liked playing with his new Leapstart 3d reader. I 100% recommend bringing a couple new toys or books with you on any vacation. They can help keep kids entertained because they’re shiny and new. Also, they’re great tools to use for long car rides.

These are the new toys and books we brought with us for the trip that our son really enjoyed:

• LeapFrog LeapStart Interactive Learning System – This is really neat. The books for this leapstart system range all the way from 2 years old until 1st grade, so it’s something we’ll be able to use for years to come.
• Melissa and Doug Reusable Sticker Pad – Our two year old really liked playing with the dinosaur stickers and sea animal stickers from this set. We put this away when we got home to have in our toolbelt only for vacations so that he isn’t bored of it by the time we travel next.
• Baby Shark Color Wonder Coloring Pad – This mess free coloring set is PERFECT for vacations when your kids want to color, but you don’t want a mess.
• Peek a Flap Who by Jaye Garnett – This book is perfect for staying in a cabin. It talks about different animals you might find near the mountains or forested areas.
• Touch and Feel: Fall by Scholastic – Since we were staying at our cabin for the first weekend of fall, it only felt right to bring a book about it!

Mom and Stepdad Arrive at the Cabin

At around 4:30 on Friday, my mom and stepdad came up to the cabin as well. The vrbo we chose was perfect to invite them. There was a smaller detached cabin behind ours where they stayed. When they finally arrived that night, I made tacos for everyone for dinner. They were able to visit with their grandson for a bit before heading out to their own space for the night.

That night, after a long day of keeping our son out of trouble, we were exhausted once again, haha. We watched tv for a bit but quickly went to bed.

Cabin Life: Day 3

Day three, Saturday, was probably the most eventful day of our vacation! We started our morning with a breakfast of muffins, fruit and yogurt. Our two-year-old had music class shortly thereafter. He loves his music classes, so I didn’t want him to miss out, even while on vacation! Especially because we had missed his first and second in-person classes because we were quarantining, I wanted him to still have some music class time for the week.

After his music class, we had plans to go to Mount St. Helens. Seeing that we were reasonably close-ish and seeing as how I hadn’t been there before, we decided to go check it out! We had invited my parents to come with us, but plans changed and they weren’t able to come. So even though I was disappointed they weren’t able to come, we still had a nice time just our small family.

I made an early lunch around 11 so that we could hopefully be on the road by noon. However, with the change in plans with my mom and stepdad, plus little man taking a while to eat, we weren’t actually on our way until about 1:00. We stopped to grab coffees from the one and only local espresso stand, Base Camp Coffee, which had REALLY good drinks, by the way. From there, our plan was to head to the Mt. St. Helens gift shop in Castle Rock, WA, about an hour and a half away.

Mount St. Helens

At the gift shop, we bought kiddo a book about Washington state and a Sasquatch stuffed animal. My husband got a hat, and I got a really pretty glass ornament made from ash from the volcano eruption. We also brought my mom one of the ornaments and got my stepdad a small vile of ash as well. After going to the gift shop, we wanted to take the scenic route back to see the mountain on the way back home. The night before we left, google said it was about 2 1/2 hours for the drive back. But now google was showing it was nearly 5 hours. That absolutely wasn’t doable if I wanted to get back to make dinner, so I was somewhat disappointed. But, the drive was still really pretty and I was still able to get some pretty shots of the mountain from a distance!

Dinner and Bedtime

That night for dinner I made Snoop Dogg’s recipe for dirty south gumbo. If you don’t have it, I highly recommend getting his cookbook: Snoop Dogg’s From Crook to Cook. So many good recipes in there! His gumbo recipe is one that I seriously crave though. I loooooove gumbo. It’s so flavorful, filling, and delicious. It was a late dinner again, so our son ended up having chicken nuggets and diced veggies. Not the most nutritious, but hey, we were on vacation. I don’t care as long as he’s fed, haha! We ended up only spending a little bit of time with my mom and stepdad that night for dinner before it was time for our toddler to go to bed.

That night, kiddo had a VERY hard time getting to bed. Remember how his bedroom door wouldn’t latch? Well, he was up until about 10:30 running out of his room. He usually goes to bed at 7:30 or 8 for reference. Ugh. Needless to say, we were exhausted, but we hadn’t had a movie night yet. So, we stayed up and watched a comedy special from Gabriel Iglesias before heading to bed. We were sleeping peacefully… until I woke up from a nightmare screaming thinking there was a damn bear in our room of our cabin hahaha! I felt so bad for the hubs the next day. I scared the shit out of him 😂 Oops. Thankfully I didn’t wake anyone else up.

Cabin Life: Day 4

On Sunday, I made a big breakfast for everyone (though it ended up being brunch for my mom and stepdad.) I wanted to make sure that they had a nice meal before they had to head home. We had cinnamon french toast, sausage, eggs, and hash browns. Everything turned out amazing!

After our big breakfast, we were still too full for lunch so I just made our son something small. We checked in with my parents to see if they needed any help with getting packed up before heading home and then took a short walk. At the end of the trail by our cabin, there was a super pretty forest trail. We ended up having to head back early though because our stroller wasn’t about to make it through the gravel, but it was still nice to get out for a peaceful walk even for a little bit.

Dinner Time

That night we ended up having the leftover gumbo for dinner. We got everything packed up for the next morning since we were going to be checking out. I had initially wanted to watch a scary movie for the last night we were in the cabin. It was rainy outside and there wasn’t much else to do since we packed everything else up. That plan changed when our son had trouble getting to sleep again. He didn’t go to bed until 9:30. By the time he finally went to sleep for the night, we were so tired. We also decided it probably wasn’t a good idea to watch a scary movie given my nightmare the night before, haha! We got everything basically ready to go and went to sleep. However, we woke up at 5:30… when we noticed the rainstorm knocked out power to the cabin.

Cabin Life: Day 5 – Checkout

My plan was to make an English muffin for breakfast. I couldn’t really do that without a toaster, or power to the stove. I was anxious because we threw everything else away except for snacks the night before. What was I going to feed my kid? Cheez its for breakfast? I mean I guess you gotta do what you gotta do. But it certainly wasn’t ideal. Always have a backup plan. Next time, I’ll buy applesauce, fruits, or other things that require no cooking for food just in case. Plus, trying to check out of a rental during a power outage? No thanks. We only had two small camping lanterns with us provided by the cabin rental. The larger lantern they had provided didn’t have batteries. So, as you can imagine, it wasn’t exactly fun, haha!

Thankfully, the electric company restored the power right before the kiddo woke up at 7. So, breakfast was still able to happen, we were able to make coffees, etc. Because that was the other issue. Nowhere in Packwood had power. It wasn’t just us. It was an issue in all of Packwood and Randle meaning there would be no restaurants, no coffee, no grocery store, etc. within a 45 minute radius. So we dodged a big bullet there, because no coffee and no food is no good, haha!

Heading Home

When we finally got on the road at about 9:30, we were able to stop one last time at Base Camp Coffee before heading out on the 3 1/2 hour drive home. It was super foggy and rainy but it was still a really pretty drive. We left at 9:30 so that it would be 11 when we got into Enumclaw to eat lunch. We stopped at Charlie’s Cafe which was super cute and had delicious food. It’s always the tiny restaurants with the best food, I’m telling you!

I have never seen a chicken fried steak dip anywhere else. Chicken fried steak is one of my favorite meals, so I HAD to try this. It came with a small cup of sausage gravy to dip the sandwich in. It was SO good. Little dude got a PB and J with curly fries and hubby got a breakfast sandwich with hash browns. After stopping for lunch, we stopped in Maple Valley to go to this really neat antique and collectibles shop. They had a replica of the Dragula from The Munsters that I wanted SO BAD for my office. It was like American Pickers’ dream in there. So cool.

By the time we got home, it was about 2 p.m. It was nice to get home early because we actually unpacked everything instead of living out of our suitcases for the next two weeks, haha! We then went to pick up Patches from our Rover, who sent us cute pictures of him the whole time. The cabin we stayed at did allow pets for a fee, but we weren’t sure if we were going to be doing anything where he wouldn’t be able to come with. If we stay there again, we will 100% bring him with. He totally had a blast though playing with the other doggo they were watching.

Cabin Life: In Conclusion

This was a really fun vacation for all of us. I would 100% do it again. Though, I think next time I’d probably order out more to make it more like a vacation for me so that I’m not cooking all the time, even on vacation! Who knows, maybe this will be our new family tradition!

Have you ever been to Packwood? Are there cabins in other areas in Washington you’d recommend staying in? Leave a comment below if you have any ideas of fun family things to do next time we’re in a cabin! If you enjoyed this post and want to see more, feel free to check out my fun and more page or any of the posts down below for fun fall activities. You can also get weekly updates if you subscribe to Growing Up Garlicky. That way you’ll never miss out on any of the fun things we’re doing! Thanks everyone for reading! Have a great week 🙂

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