Weekend at the Fort

This past weekend the weather was crazy, so what did we do? We went camping! We had the camping trip planned for a while and were looking forward to it. Needless to say, it was a memorable weekend.

The plan was to take our bikes on FrontRunner from Woods Cross to Ogden, ride just under a mile and a half to Fort Buenaventura and then camp out in tipis or teepees (apparently it can be spelled both ways.)

Well, things went pretty much as planned, but it included a lot of rain. Friday afternoon Ben rode his bike while I ran and pushed Jack in the stroller down to the train station. And who did we run into? My brother-in-law and the kids.

We hadn't plan to ride the train with them, but it was fun that it worked out that way.
When we arrived in Ogden it was raining and it rained the rest of the day and into the night (except for like 15 minutes.) We hung out at Union Station and visited the train museum, car museum, and gun museum.
We had hoped that the rain would let up a little so we could ride our bikes over to Fort Buenaventura, it never did, but we rode over anyway. We had to carry the stroller and bikes up the stairs and ride over the 24th street overpass
and then down the hill into the Fort where my parents and sister had already arrived.

My dad had called me and told me that in some of the teepees there was four inches of water. I thought he was joking, he insisted he wasn't.

Fortunately there were teepees that weren't filled with water.
We are so glad we invited my dad, because he is always thinks of things like heaters for the teepees, which were especially good because he was able to dry out the ground a bit as the teepees of course just have dirt floors.

I am glad my mom came too. I think it was very brave of her.


Jack wasn't particularly happy about the whole situation. He kept saying he wanted to go home, but he is always that way. When we first got to the teepees he got out of the stroller and after a few minutes he wanted back into the protection of the stroller and he didn't get out again until there was a fire going in the teepee.
Besides Jack, the kids hardly complained. They were wet and cold, but they didn't care. Even after riding their bikes in the rain when the arrived at the Fort they played in the water for over an hour.
Then we hung out in my parents teepee, ate dinner and smores before heading off to bed.
In the morning the wind started, and by the time we left a couple of trees had fallen down.

It was just crazy weather. Instead of loading all the bikes up on the cars the kids decided they wanted to take the train home. Unfortunately the wind made things miserable as we were heading over the overpass and the kids to walk their bikes across. Ben broke down crying, understandably. I was just amazed it took that long.
We took the train to Wood Cross and then walked and biked back home without once getting in the car this weekend.
Despite the crazy weather and the fact the weekend could have been completely miserable, we had a lot of fun. We want to do it again, but only if the weather is better.



P.S. Fort Buenaventura was beautiful. I had never been there before and I was very impressed. It's amazing that it's so close to Ogden, it's right in the city. However, it's just west of the train yard so all night light we could hear trains. All of the time you could hear the diesel engines running, sometimes it was really loud. At least it was mostly constant so it was kind of like white noise, but a couple of times in the night it drove me crazy. I would go again, but if you go, just wanted to warn ya.