Moab

I love Southern Utah!  Sometimes it amazes me how many people that have lived in Utah their whole life haven't been to Southern Utah.  My parents took me there almost every year when I was young, and now I am taking my kids there. While vacations, but especially camping, are an insane amount of work it is so important to me that my boys spend lots and lots and lots of time outside.

I love getting to Southern Utah when it's dark.  Sure it's a pain to put up a tent in the dark, but I love waking up in the morning to the gorgeous red rock of Southern Utah.  For me it's an excitement I equate to waking up on Christmas morning when I was a kid.  It takes my breath away.  

A couple of weekends ago we went down to Moab.  My sister was running in the Moab Half Marathon with some of her friends and she had reserved the group campsite in Archers National Park.  The campground in Arches is awesome and is surrounded by red rock that is perfect for kids to go exploring on.  My kids had so much fun

We knew there was a chance that Chad might run the 5 mile race, but it turned out there was opening for him to do the half marathon.  What?!  Chad do a half marathon?!  He runs 3.5 miles three times a week, but he hates running and his isn't particularly built for it.  However my sister and I were able to convince him to try to run the half marathon.  I told him that the worst thing that could happen would be that he would be picked up by the 'slow' bus. 

Chad amazed himself, me, and a bunch of other people when he finished the race in a decent time.  He wasn't picked up by the slow bus and he finished only ten minutes after my sister.  He didn't pass out at the finish line and although he was sore a couple of days after the race he was pleasantly surprised that he wasn't as sore as he was expecting.  

I love food trucks and saw this one in Moab and decided to try it.  It was sooooooo good!  After we got home I found out it was it's first day open.

The weather was less than ideal for the camping trip.  My sister had reserved the campsite for Friday, Saturday, and Sunday night.  Everybody but my sister and her family and Chad and I and our little family bailed on Saturday.  We have been camping enough times to know that often the weather isn't ideal.  We stayed Saturday night even after the campground host told us they were expecting 60 mph winds.  And yes it was very, very windy. On Sunday when we woke up it was still windy and very cold and snow was in the forecast, we packed up and left.  We quickly packed up, while being sandblasted, and headed out just in time for it to start raining and snowing.  

We were bummed, but we weren't prepared for camping in snow.

Tony's Grove

For Labor Day weekend we went camping at Tony's Grove up Logan Canyon. Oh. My. Goodness. It was sooooooo beautiful.

When we pulled into our camping spot late Friday night it was 42 degrees. A bit colder than we had anticipated, but we still had lots of fun. The weather during the day was awesome. We spent almost all day Saturday down at Tony's Grove Lake, hiking around the lake and paddling around in the rubber raft (well Chad paddled us all around the lake). The wildflowers were amazing.

It was Luke's first camping trip, and although he didn't sleep all that well it was such a fun weekend. I wish we would have done more camping this summer. (If I could pay somebody to get us ready and clean up after the trip. Those parts are maddening. And yes, I complain about it every time.)

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.