One last camp out before back to school...

We decided to do one last camp out before I head back to school next week. I got a nice backpack for Christmas and hadn't yet taken opportunity to do a backpack type camp so we headed up to Mill Flat on Friday afternoon for an overnighter. Paul was good enough to carry the airbed in his pack. I took the tent. We had great weather for the hike. It was a little cooler than it has been lately. It was beautiful as always with water in the stream most of the way up. We did a little service project en route. A big aspen had fallen recently and they had cut it in pieces and moved all but one piece out the the trail. That last piece was smack in the middle, so with Paul's skills and supervision we levered it up and to the side and wedged it with rocks. It was a lot cooler than we expected when we got to the top, so we ate a quick dinner, set up camp and headed to bed pretty early to get out of the cold. It was about 41 when we woke up, so we opted to eat breakfast in bed and didn't strike camp until about 8 am. Then we searched around and found the trail over to Anderson Valley. We cached our packs and just took water and headed over there. The Forest Service had done some work on it so you could actually find it. It's between 2 and 3 miles. We visited that site and then checked to see if they had done any work on the trail from there down to Browse. It looks like they have. We had no time to do that, so we headed back to Mill Flat and ate lunch and headed back down. We saw quite a few people on horses and one guy camped out training his hunting dog. We had several deer hang around camp during the evening. We met up with one rattle snake when we were just about back to the truck, but he just skuttled on out of the way. All in all we did about 18 miles and it was a great break-in-my-backpack trip!

Thought J.J. deserved a picture for all his help!

I don't know about you, but he's welcome any time as far as I'm concerned.

Family Camp 2009

Another Family Camp has come and gone. We are home, clean, and have slept in a real bed, enjoyed real bathroom facilities, and are starting to feel less stuffed with great food. I guess I have to ask myself the question...did the good times outweigh the inconveniences? Just want to say for me, they did. Thanks to all of the family for making it a great time! Love you all. (Brenden isn't in the family picture because he was too tired and was snoozing in the hammock.)

Noah is official...at last!

Had a great day on Sunday. We went up to Bountiful for Noah Lance Weaver's blessing. It was such a nice gathering for the special event. Yes, he's a little older than most babies who get blessed, but hey, isn't it great that his dad thinks things like this are important enough to wait until he's ready instead of just being ho hum about it? Juge was a wonderful hostess to everyone afterwards with a tasty meal so we wouldn't go home hungry. We also got the chance to visit with Jay and Brynn at their house on Saturday night and got to eat one of their blogworthy dinners! Thanks Jay and Brynn for letting us invite ourselves over! Also got to go to Ashfork again last week and camped out yet again. I'm trying to get in all I can before school starts up. We didn't even sleep in the tent this time. We just slept on the back of the truck under the stars. It was so nice. Well, gotta get crackin' so I can get everything done and get ready for the family camp coming up this week! (On the way home from the blessing we went the back route and got to see the Manti Temple...so lovely.)

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Week end full of good times

Wow, we had such a fun week end. Lou and Bryan invited us up for Ellie's #3 birthday on Saturday. We had been wanting to go on a real camping trip and decided to combine the two. Friday afternoon we headed up to the Tuschar mountains by Beaver. We stopped in and got curds and an ice cream cone in Beaver. We hoped to try out that new possible family camp spot we had located, but it was full of people and trailers. We went to a few other places over that way and found them full of people too. So we headed back over to our other family camp spot and it was empty and as beautiful as ever. We set up there. It was perfect overcast weather. We felt raindrops a few times, but nothing we had to jump in the tent to get away from. Paul cooked us up a delicious beef stew with garlic/cheese biscuits on top. After dinner we needed to take a walk down the road a piece the shake down some of that good food. We checked out lots of side roads as possible camp sites. As we got to one meadow we found it full of elk. Paul was able to sneak up and get a few pictures and then they got scared and one of them let out a loud bugle and they went crashing off through the woods. We decided we had better head back to camp since it was getting close to dark. Then we took a drive back down our walking route...driving is a lot faster! We saw the elk again and at another meadow we saw another herd too. We turned off the truck and listened to them crashing off through the woods and bugling to each other all the while. It was something I had never heard before and it was so cool. We saw lots of deer, some with small antlers and one with a really big rack. Then it was off to the tent for a great night's sleep. Next morning we had and easy breakfast so we could get on with the day. We decided we wanted to hike up on Mt. Delano. Delano Peak is the highest point in the Tushar Mountains of south-central Utah. The Tushars are the third-highest range in the state, after the Uinta Mountains and the La Sal Range, though Delano itself is surpassed in height by at least thirty-one other Utah peaks.

Located in the Fishlake National Forest, Delano Peak is the highest point of both Beaver and Piute counties. The mountain is named for Columbus Delano (1809–1896), Secretary of the Interior during the Grant administration. We had a map that supposedly showed a trail head location, but it wasn't to be found so we just headed up and found an old jeep trail that has been unmade by the forest service and used it as our trail up the mountain. It went about 3/4's of the way up and then we found goat trails or just headed up for the rest of the way. We were hoping we'd see some of the rocky mountain goats. About the time the jeep trail ran out we saw one lone goat. That was all we needed to spur us on to the top. When we got up to the peak we looked down the other side and there was a whole herd of goats. They are such powerful looking animals and so beautiful. At the top we also met a couple of guys from AZ. There was also a mailbox up there with a sign-in book to leave your name and comments in. We spent quite a while up there enjoying the views and then headed down. On the way we were able to see another small heard of goats and we also came upon our one lone goat that we had seen on the way up. We should have taken our telephoto lens and we could have gotten betters pics. Going down seemed harder than going up, but we made it with a lunch stop in route. Then we washed our feet in an ice cold stream, changed our clothes in a mountain outhouse and headed on to Fillmore and Ellie's b-day dinner and party. She's was so excited about her carousel cake. It was fun to see Bryan's folks and his grandma Burbank there for the party too. We had a yummy dinner of homemade chicken fingers/Alfredo noodles and salad - Ellie's choice - and then opened presents and had cake. Ellie had a good time with all her presents and dressed up in lots of her girlie presents right away. It was a fun full week end. We got home and unpacked our gear/hit the shower and headed off to bed tired, but with great memories.

I finally got to go camping!

All summer I have been wanting to go camping, and with all the busyness going on we just haven't made it. Finally, Paul needed a load of stone over in Arizona, so Monday afternoon we took off. He had to be back Tuesday evening for Scouts, so it had to be quick, but it was really nice. It wasn't a full blown camp out with all the food, but we did sleep out in a tent in the forest, so it was good. We stopped in at Jacob's Lake for dinner. We had a so tasty chicken, vegetable, fruit salad with an orange/basil/olive oil dressing. I highly recommend it. And, they had a piece of their have to have it coconut cream pie for me. It's a bad place to stay slim. Then we drove on to Flagstaff and past and out into the ponderosa forest and found a nice spot and put up our tent. It didn't look like rain, so we left the fly off the tent and could look out at all the stars. It was the perfect temperature. I slept better than I ever have camping. We got up and had breakfast on the back of the truck and then headed off to get our load of stone. We stopped again at Jacob's Lake and got a sandwich and some of their scrumptious cookies (ahhh...the lemon zuchinni ones are so good...along with all the others) and ate on the way so we'd make it home on time. We did see one bad thing on the way home. Right by the Vermillion Cliffs, before Jacob's Lake, we could see a huge plume of black smoke over the hill. When we got close we saw that somebody's giant motor home was pulled off the road and was in flames. As soon as we got phone service, we started trying to call 911, but before we were able to get through the forest service trucks headed past us going that way. We saw a bunch of other fire and police vehicles heading out there too. There was a big truck stopped there helping the people. No one seemed to have gotten hurt. Pretty awful thing to have happen and ruin your vacation.

Happy 'beefday' to Supe!

Sunday evening all the family that resides in this neck of the woods got together to celebrate (one day early) Supe's #23 birthday. Gaige has a unique way of pronouncing birthday - beefday - and he says it so cute, that it's catching on. Supe wanted brownies instead of cake. He got lots of help blowing out his candles. Presents were mostly getting ready to go away to school and be his own cook type. He did get a nice cycling jersey too. Brenden simply can't stand to hear singing other than high soprano voices, so he screamed through the birthday song. Happy beefday Supe! We love you! PS - Bean and Tavin are coming up next:o)

They made it!

Last week Paul got to go and visit one of his favorite places...the Colorado Rockies. He shared the trip with the Young Men from the ward, the YM President and a dad of one of the boys. They left on Monday morning and returned, having hiked 50 miles, late Saturday evening. They were able to do 21 miles coming out on Friday qualifying for the hiking merit badge requirement to hike 20 miles in one day. On Saturday the visited Ouray Hot Springs to soak their sore muscles and clean up a little before heading home. He says it turned out to be a great trip. He was pretty worried about a couple of the boys being able to make it, but they all did it. Bonnie enjoyed a week of catching up on needed projects, reading, going to the temple, etc. while he was gone.

This could be a great family camp spot for this year!

Paul and I went family camp site hunting for the 4th of July. We got up early and went to the bi-ward 4th of July program/breakfast and then headed out to the mountains above Beaver. There were several things we wanted to do, and it was a long day, but we got most of them that were possible done. We wanted to check out any possible camp sites along the road to Big John's Flat. The road was open, so we went up every side road along it and to the end of it. We found what looks like an excellent spot that has very good road to it. No one was there and it was so beautiful. As you head up the road to the mountains you take the turn off to Big John's Flat. About 2.4 miles down the road is a turn off to Hamilton Flat & Kay's Meadow. We went down that and found a beautiful, open, flat meadow. There's plenty of room. After that we tried to go up the road to the high mountains where went and played in the snow on another family camp in that area, but it still had the gate closed. We went back out and drove over to our last family camp site in those mountains. It's still a beautiful spot, but it was occupied for the 4th. Then we headed down the other side of the mountain and on to Marysville and headed up the road toward that old mine site that we went to with Jay and Brynn and on further. The road got really bad, so we headed back and then went up the turn off to Cottonwood Canyon. We went as far as we could and realized that we had been on that road another time...coming from Beaver and over the mountains where we had played in the snow on that other family camp. We had been wanting to find where those roads connect. We stopped because there were some trees down in the road, and knew the road was closed on the other side anyway. (It would be really fun to drive over that mountain and down to the mine for a family camp activity. The road should be open by then.) It was getting late, so we headed back up the mountain and over and down to Beaver and on home. It was cool, sprinkly, and a beautiful day! (We had a picnic at a fun spot with a log bench and table.)