Summer Vaccation

What says summer than a two week vacation? After getting some hints that it had been a few months since our last trek to Utah we decided to take a brake from the rain of Colorado and head West to see family. Now usually Mike will take his laptop and work while were are there taking a few days off here and there. Not this time. We crammed in a full summer of fun into two weeks. We had so much fun and some sad along the way. It has taken me a good week and a half due to a cold to recover from all the fun. With so much to tell I will brake it up into the next few blogs.

Our Summer vacation started with Maggie's first real camping experience. We went camping in Utah with Grandma Margaret and Grandpa Fred and Aunt Carolyn and her kids. We had a big beautiful campsite with running water and real toilets. (Ok, to some of you that isn't camping but I have found this to be a plus now a days.) Everything was perfect except for the location. Unfortunately it was right next to the very step part of the highway going up to Strawberry Reservoir. All night long we heard the big trucks grinding their brakes going down the hill and accelerating going up the canyon. Two nights of this and we were ready to go home. Other than that it was a beautiful and fun time with my family.

Tuesday we got up to the camp ground and set up camp. Mike and I got a new tent last year and hadn't used it yet. See Mike seems to think it was for emergencies only as he isn't a camping fan.
We struggled for some time with it but almost 1 1/2 hours later, we got it up. It was fun to sleep out in sleeping bags although Mags ended up in ours both nights. That evening Grandpa and Grandma and us went to check out Strawberry reservoir to find some good places to fish the next day as Grandpa's boat isn't working right now. We had fun dipping our feet in the water and watching the fish from the docks. Grandpa and Maggie did a little fishing just to check the water.

It was a beautiful day and with no one around it was peaceful. That night Mike taught Maggie about roasting marshmallows and I taught her about smores. Mmmm Smores!!!!


Maggie was so excited to see her cousins "the kids" that night. We snuggled down in with the girls in the tent for the night.

The next day we woke to a beautiful hot day. After breakfast we headed up to Strawberry to do a little fishing and have lunch. We forgot the crawdad cage back at camp and the chicken bones and dad wouldn't go back and get it saying he didn't think there were any crawdads in this area anyway. So, he and I helped get all the fishing poles ready for the kids and they had fun although we got there kind of late and the fish were just not biting anymore.


Brittany caught our only catch for the day - A crawdad. Mike gave dad a hard time about the lack of fish (Mike doesn't fish) and how next time we didn't need to bring the fishing poles as there might not be any fish. Maggie thought the crawdad was funny and looked like Mr. Crabs (from Spongebob Squarepants).

That afternoon we needed to cool off so we found a shallow area and went wadeing. My dad caught a few winks on the picnic table.

It was fun skipping and throwing rocks. Maggie liked picking up rocks and throwing them out into the lake. At one point she bent down to pick one up out of the water and then a wave popped up and got her all over the face and she was wet head to toe. She got mad and blamed us for it.


We cut our camping trip short to go to a funeral. the day we left we found out that one of our friends who had recently moved to Maine lost their son to Carbon monoxid poisening while at a cabin visiting Family in Utah. We were so sad as we had just visited with them two weeks before. Mike had taught him a few years ago in Sunday school. He was weeks away from his 17th birthday. We were heartbroken for our friends and their family.