Novice Camping

My father-in-law planned a fishing trip to somewhere in southern Utah (even though I drove there and back - I still couldn't' really tell you exactly where it was - and if I did I would be forever banished from his presence for giving out top secret location information. Let's just say I drove through Escalante Grand Staircase and some beautiful Bryce Canyon scenery...after that it was confusing.)
Matt had to fly to California at the last second for work, but I decided to stick with the plan (heaven forbid I allow myself to ever budge from the plan!!). The modified plan now entailed me driving, with 4 children, to Flagstaff and following my father-in-law for 7 hours to somewhere (that resembled a bit where we started...back in Flagstaff).

He assured me there would be no NOVICES around.

We set up camp the first night in a drizzle of rain...no biggie.

When we woke up the next morning it was sunny and beautiful. Grant told us about the "little hike" we needed to take to get to the lake. I hopped in my brother and sister-in-laws car and we followed Grant for a few miles. We encountered an insane BOULDER MOUNTAIN and Ray and Hez's car didn't have a prayer of making it up over the rocks. So we all piled in with Grant and shoved the 6 kids in the camper of the pick-up. We bounced for about 20 minutes and made it to the destination....to begin the hike.

Did I mention the STEEP terrain? Or that it was about 45 minutes up - one way? Oh and Laina was hiking in galoshes! Good thing we're HARD CORE!

But it sure was pretty...

And I got the image that I drove 16 hours round trip for...

Out of all those boys...Lee-lee was the only one to catch a fish!

Of course Mac has no shoes on...why would we need shoes when climbing over boulders??

Take note as to how many pictures Mac ends up in...he's taken "posing" to a whole new art form.

Hezzie had the uncanny ability to lie down on a bed of boulders and take a nap. Wow.

Indy found this little shangri-la and begged me to take pictures of him...I must say he picked some gorgeous light.

McLaren's face is worth a thousand words - and just about sums up the remainder of the trip...Indy and Max kept begging me to take more pictures (they must have been desperately bored :), but Mac was crying about something and the next thing I new....brown water.

Yup...the kind that isn't convenient when camping...and it's raining...and won't stop raining.

After spending most of the next day huddled under the make shift tarp-thing...and throwing down on some mean ol' navajo tacos - then heading to the car to read to the kids while it rained and rained - Ray, Heather & I decided that we were definitely NOVICES and threw in the towel. We had camp packed up in record time and bailed all the way down the Grand Staircase to sleep in our beds that night - Grant was still out fishing in sub-zero rain :)

Grant, is an avid sportsman - in fact he's in Alaska this very moment way out on the Bearing Sea - in UnAlaska - Dutch Harbor - where they film the Deadliest Catch. Matt (who chickened out on our family fishing trip with his dad) is flying out to meet him this weekend....and there's no way home...for NOVICES!