Camping

We had a short stretch of time in between Sam's activities ending and Charlie's school beginning, so we decided to fill it with lots of fun. One of the things we did was to go camping up in Snowy Range. We got a pretty late start and only had time that first day to find a place to camp, set it up, and eat dinner. We had to find an actual campsite this time because of the fire restrictions. We found a pretty good one. Unfortunately, we had quite a big rainstorm that night. We ended up eating our dinner in the truck. Luckily, it wasn't a very messy dinner (grilled burritos). Soon after we got in the truck, it quit raining, but it was still cold. Charlie built the fire back up to warm us up.I brought some marshmallows for roasting, you know, those HUGE ones for roasting. Sam loved it. He didn't care much for eating them, but he loved making huge fireballs then blowing them out.

Sam also loved jumping around in the tent. I finally told him that he couldn't keep going in and out. He was getting everything very wet and dirty, and that wouldn't make for a very good night.

Sam had a great time sleeping in the tent. Sleep wasn't very good because Sam kept wiggling out of the sleeping bag, and I would have to shove him back in about every hour. He didn't seem to mind too much. The next morning, we got up and made breakfast. I made Sam's first and set it on the table. He was too preoccupied with everything else to eat right away. Until a bird (Charlie said they were called camp robbers. Very fitting) came and took some of his food. He was pretty sad. So I made him another plate and told him to eat it right away so the birds wouldn't take it.

After breakfast, we started on our hike. There was a lake (Lost Lake, ironically) that Charlie wanted to try fishing, but you could only get there by walking. This hike started out just fine, but then Charlie didn't listen to me (yes, I'm blaming Charlie for this :). I will use my awesome Photoshop skills to explain :)

At one point, (The place where the blue and red lines diverge), the trail seemed to split into two paths. I pointed to the left one and said, "Charlie, are you sure this isn't the way we are supposed to go?" It made sense to me. Lost Lake was to the west, so we should go west, not north. Charlie assured me we were supposed to take the other trail. This trail did take us to a lake, but not the one we wanted, so we kept heading down the trail. The trail gradually disappeared. I'm assuming, like us, people assumed that this trail would take you to the other lake. Unlike us, once they discovered this was not the case, they turned around, so the wrong trail become less and less pronounced, until there was no trail at all. We would catch glimpses of trails and move to them (they were probably game trails). *I will mention, we were never exactly lost. We knew the general direction, and if we climbed to the top of  the occasional hill, we could see Brooklyn Lake, which is where we started, there was just a forest between us now* We kept wandering back and forth, looking for the trail. I'm not sure of our exact movements, but the red line vaguely shows where we went. The blue line is the actual trail. After what seemed like an eternity, we found an actual trail, we just weren't sure it was the one we wanted. But we kept going on it. We knew we were close (I heard, "It's just around this corner" about 10 different times :) We finally ran into some people along the way, who told us that this was in fact the trail to Lost Lake. After we got there, I wasn't sure how Charlie was planning on fishing. The lake was full of rocks.

Oh well, at least it gave me a chance to rest a little bit. Apparently Charlie had the same thought I did. Too many rocks, so he wanted to hike to the other side of the lake, where it looked like a better place to fish.

Here is where he wanted to go.

I wasn't too happy about this decision. It meant more hiking, plus the hiking involved climbing over ginormous heaps of granite boulders.

I don't have a picture of where we climbed, but this is the best representation I could find. Imagine this, except 4 times bigger, and over a much larger expanse.

But we started going in that direction. After about 20 minutes, I asked where it was that he was wanting to go. It was still quite a ways off. It also would have included climbing back down the mountains of boulders to get to the spot, and then climbing back up when we were done.

Don't I look happy? :)

I finally convinced Charlie that it was too much work, it was starting to get late, and by the time we got down there, he would only be able to fish for about 5 minutes before we had to leave. What made it worse was that we weren't sure of the exact time. Charlie's phone was dead and the clock on mine doesn't work outside of cell coverage. So we decided to start heading back to the truck. Then came the decision of which way to go. Neither of us wanted to hike all the way back down the boulders and around the lake where the trail was and figured it would save a lot of time to just kind of cut across and go straight down to the trial. We butted heads again. I said that we should head south, which is where the trail would be. Charlie said it would be too hard to go that way because of hills, trees, etc. We should go east, where it looked flatter and clearer. I wasn't about to go with his instinct (look where it got us), but he was right. East was clearer. We finally made it back to the trail (Our path was the green line), but I don't think it was any shorter. Seeing how defined this trail was, we wondered how we could have lost it in the first place. Then we came to the place where the trails had at first diverted. And guess which way we came out. The way I had said to turn. I had to give Charlie a hard time about that.

I think this pretty well sums up how I was feeling :)

After a short stop for Charlie to fish a little, we finally made our way to the truck and drove back to camp. We finally got there around 7:30. We hurriedly made a fire to start cooking dinner, but it was quickly getting dark. We ended up eating our dinner in pitch black. I don't know if you've ever done it, but I'll tell you, it doesn't feel right not seeing what you're eating. We took turns holding the light up to each other's food so we could see. We eventually made it to bed for another night of not-so-great sleep. We woke up and ate breakfast (Sam was sure to eat his quickly), then Charlie took Sam fishing while I packed up camp and rested. After not much success, they came back and we headed home. Even with all the troubles we had, it was still a fun trip.

Sam found a perfect little seat on the trail.

He had fun.

Charlie was happy to see an elk :)

So what are the lessons we can take with us from this trip? 1) Don't forget your map at home, and maybe bring a compass. 2) Invest in a watch so you know what time it is. 3) Listen to your wife. She's always right.