On Saturday Friluftsfrämjandet organized a family hike in Åsnen National park. These family hikes are very popular, and they’re shorter hikes suitable for families with smaller kids.

A lot of families came, and me and C came as participants.

Christoffer and Henric led the hike, a roughly 2 km circle trail with exciting nature. C and her friend E stayed together the entire time, playing, gathering sticks and climbing rocks.

After the hike was done we came back to the entrance of the park, started a fire and everyone made dinner. Some brought cold food, others used stoves and a few of us grilled sausages and burgers. After dinner most went home, but me, Christoffer, Mikael and our kids stayed to camp a night in the park.

You’re only allowed to camp in one specific location in the park, and it’s not a very good one. The shelter is pretty poorly designed and there isn’t room for more than a few tents. As it is with many of these southern national parks, they don’t seem to care much about campers.

But we set up our camp. Me and Mikael in tents with our kids, and Christoffer with his kids in the shelter. The kids played by themselves more or less the entire evening.

When we drove towards Åsnen in the morning there was rain. I wasn’t too psyched about the prospect of the entire weekend outside, but once there the rain stopped. And by the time we went to the campsite we had sun. The entire evening was amazing. It was warm, sunny and in every aspect great to be outside.

We made dinner on our stoves, but made a fire afterwards, and sat by it til late in the evening.

The kids used glowing sticks from the fire to spin fast and make glowing patterns in the dark.

We had a really nice evening by the fire, and almost exactly after we decided to go to bed it started to rain.

It kept raining on and off during the entire night, but by morning we woke up to sunshine. The tent was still wet though, and I waited for the wind and sun to dry it up. But the moment it got dry and I was about to pack it up a short rain shower came. It didn’t rain long, but enough to completely soak the tent again. I wiped some water off, waited for it to dry again in the sun, that had returned, only to have another short rain shower come in. I gave up and packed it up wet.

We made breakfast and a fire by the lake, before packing up the rest and leaving the campsite.

It was a nice trip and it was great to finally be out in some spring weather. The campsite isn’t that good but it was still a really nice time outside.