Gone Camping!

Well, we finally did it. We loaded everyone up and drove to the mountains to go camping. I know what you are thinking - how sad that our kids haven't ever been camping before. It just seemed a little hard with such young ones...although I know all of you do it and get through it. I guess I haven't been brave enough to do it until now. So we planned a camping trip with our friends Lauren and Cody.

Tyler, McKenna and Kylie were so excited. All Friday they were anxiously awaiting. You can imagine how long the car ride was with them constantly asking "are we there yet?" We had planned to go to Warm Spring River in Ashton, and we drove there, but found that they were all full. So from Ashton we took the scenic byway past Mesa Falls and on to Island Park to the Buffalo campground. Not a bad place at all. Quite shady and beautiful and thousands and thousands of mosquitos. The one thing we forgot of course happened to be the repellant. So we left the "men" in charge of setting up tents and we went to the nearest gas station to buy bug spray. It was of course ridiculously priced but it far outweighed the price of potentially getting the west nile virus. So the first item of business....spray every inch of us all with repellant. After that, it was quite enjoyable.

We of course had smores and biscuits on a stick with honey butter. It was great! The kids were so anxious to go the tent and go to bed! I have to tell you...it was extremely cold. I tucked the kids in with tons of blankets and they were surprisingly out really quickly. I was doing pretty good until about 4 a.m. when someone lost a dog. From that point on, I couldn't fall back asleep. It was pretty darn cold, I had to go to the bathroom - but no way was I going to walk in the pitch black all by myself to the bathroom being an easy target for the bears. I then realized why most people in Idaho who go camping a lot, all have trailers. It is way too cold for tents. It was near freezing and it is the middle of July! Then Kylie was freezing and by the time I got her all warmed up and sleeping again, it was light outside.

The funniest part was Tyler was up and dressed and sitting outside in the "porch" of the tent by 7 a.m. McKenna was so excited that as soon as Allen got up, she immediately jumped out of bed and got dressed telling us the whole time she was waiting for us to get up. Kylie on the other hand, took her time getting up and out of the tent. Funny girl.

Saturday was so great. Cody and Lauren had brought their 4 wheelers and so we drove to Macks Inn and from there took a trail that actually goes to Yellowstone. We were about 10 miles from Yellowstone when we decided to turn around and come back. It was so fun, but the dirt was caked on us like I have never known. I couldn't touch my hair, or put my finger through it because it was so thick. Allen laughed and said that I actually had a different hair color. After we ate hotdogs for lunch (of course), we packed up and came back to Rexburg. It was about the right time to come home and I think all of the excitement really got to the little ones. Before we were even out of the campground, they were all fast asleep. All in all, it was a great experience and later that evening the first question asked is "when can we go again?"