familyvacations

Family Camping Trip at Mirror Lake

(august 05)

This summer we only able to camping one time as a family. It seemed that the entire summer slipped by with all of the activities such as girls camp, our summer road trip, Dan's work and other activities. Lupe and Danny decided to make sure that we went camping one time with the family before the summer was through. Needless to say, we ended up going late in August.

We left on a Thursday afternoon, late in August, to go camping at Mirror Lake. The drive was beautiful as we drove from Kamas up in to the high Unitas. The girls were excited because this was the first camp we had done in a while as a family. We found a campsite in the improved camp grounds that had toilets, potable water and campfire pits. It was not warm when we arrived, but it was bearable. Once we arrived we setup our big 10 man tent that has two rooms. (Coordinates: N 40º 42.254 W 110º 53.061) As we were unpacking and setting up the kids enjoyed running in and out of the tent. Playing inside of the tent etc...

By the time we had the tent and picnic table set up it was dark. So we started a camp fire and ate a late dinner. Afterwards we sat around the campsite and talked until we were all tired. We put Alex in bed first, we brought a playpen that we setup as Alex's bed. Shortly thereafter the rest of us went to bed, too tired to stay up and enjoy the campfire lit night.

That night was cold (around 31º ), and of course Kelsey had to relieve herself in the middle of the night forcing Dad to get up with her and walk her to the bathrooms which were a 4 min walk from our camp site.

In the morning it was cold and no one wanted to get up because we were so warm snuggled under our covers. Of course the girls had no problem getting out of their warm covers and snuggling in with mom and dad. What is interesting about that is of course the little cold feet were almost unbearable. Eventually the pleas to go to the bathroom, force us to get out of our warm hideaway.

As part of our planned activities, Dad had brought a toy horse shoe game, Frisbees, and a tennis ball catching game. That day after eating breakfast and in response to the jeering of Katie, Dad set up the horse shoe game and played with Katie for a short while. After Katie and I finished playing, she probably played with Alex for another hour or so. After I finished helping Lupe with the final camp preparations, I started to filled a 5 gallon buck with water balloons. During the process of filling the balloons all of the kids were attracted to the activity. Katie and Kelsey pleading to have a turn filling a balloon and Nannette simply standing by and asking why I was filling the balloons. You see, I brought a big water balloon sling shot (it is a three man slingshot). The sling shot was made of surgical tubing two handles and a pouch for holding whatever is to be launched.. Basically the way it works is that you have two people hold the handles and one person put the object to be launched into the pouch and pull way back on the pouch while the two holding the handles remain still. Once they can not pull back any more, the person with the pouch lets go and launches the water balloon usually around 200 or 300 ft in distance. And once the girls knew that we were going to launch water balloons, they couldn't wait to go. We complete filled the 5 gallon bucket which was approximately 35 balloons.

So what we did is take the girls down to the side of the lake with our bucket of water balloons to launch balloons into the lake. They had a blast, and our actions gained a lot of attention because people were amazed with how far we could shot the balloons. Once we had gone through the entire bucket of balloons, the girls (except for Nannette) wanted to do more. We told them that this was enough for now, and that we would launch more later. The were disappointed, but we walked back tired back to camp.

In camp Dad had set up a couple of hammocks, one conventional hammock and one chair hammock, both of which Lupe and Danny had bought in Cozumel Mexico during their Western Caribbean Cruise. Alex and the girls loved them. They spent the majority of their time swinging in them. Alex was afraid of being in them, but Katie, Alex's best friend would grab him and force him to go with her in the chair hammock until he got over his fear. As you can see in the picture, he was not happy at first.

The girls also continued to play with plastic horse shoe set on and off throughout the day. Later in the day we took the entire family for a hike around the lake (total distance around 2 miles) The lake was beautiful and Alex noticed the fish jumping out of the lake during our hike. He did not talk much at that time, but he could somewhat coherently say "fish jump". And over and over he would repeat "fish jump" while pointing at the lake. He really enjoyed watching the fish, jump in the lake.

The trail around mirror lake ( we started at Coordinates: N 40º 42.256 W 110º 53.184) is fairly long and of course the girls started to complain that they were tired. I carried Kelsey about half of the way around the lake. We really had a good time and despite the complaints they were glad that we went, but when Dad offered to take them again later, of course no one was interested.

We got back to camp just as some storms started rolling into the valley . we could see the lightning and hear the thunder in the distance . When we got back to camp dad spent some time We put up a tarp over the picnic table so that if it began to rain we would have a place to eat . and it did not take long after he had put up before the rain came we all sat under tarp at the picnic table. Raining and plundering the storm did not give us many options for what to do . However, it did not last long . After the rain had subsided , the girls enjoyed playing on the hammocks and warming up by the fire . During the storm Lupe and I had started preparing dinner , so there wasn't much to do after the storm ended to get better growing . As usual Lupe prepared a delicious dinner. Additionally, Lupe fixed dinner a long with a Dutch oven cooked peach cobbler. It was delicious . We spent the evening talking with our girls and enjoying the stars .

The next day we got up and it was even colder than the first . Despite that, we fixed a breakfast and I took the opportunity to fill some more water balloons . Of course the girls were even more excited than before, and they couldn't wait until we can get back to the lake to shoot those water balloons . By the time we got down to the lake, there were quite a few people walking on the path . The girls quickly got lots of attention of those walking on the path as they watched the the girls launch their water balloons into the lake. Shortly thereafter, we had to pack up our goods and leave . The campsite had a checkup time of 1:00 PM so we had to get all of our stuff in the car and everybody loaded by then. overall despite the cold the girls, mom and dad had a wonderful time and can't wait to go to camp again.

Revised: 03/09/07

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