Camping in the Uintas

Before this summer Maya and I had only been camping together once when she was about 4 years old. But this summer Maya asked if we could go camping as a family so we spent a night in August at a scenic campsite in the Uinta Mountains. Kate and Alex came with us. We were so grateful for Alex being there. He helped Josh and I with a lot of things that we, as non-experienced campers, we struggling with, including building us a nice fire.

We arrived at our site a little before dusk. It was a beautiful site right on a lake but that meant there was a swarm of mosquitoes around our area as we were setting up our tent. It was awful. We got several bites, even through jeans! Nasty little things. Once the fire got going we were able to sit nice and close to it and it offered some protection from the mosquitoes.

Before we left for our campsite I prepared some "tin foil dinners." I guess that is a camper kind of thing to do. I had minced meat, potatoes, carrots and onions wrapped in foil. They seemed like they would be really yummy....if only I hadn't left them on the fire too long. They got so burned! I was really disappointed and HUNGRY so I opened up each dinner and served up some plates for everyone from what I could salvage. Everyone else told me that it tasted okay but when I started eating mine I realized that they were just being kind because everything tasted like ash. Even when it was doused in tomato sauce it was disgusting. It's a good thing we were able to fill up on roasted marshmallows and smores (chocolate and roasted marshmallows in between honey-flavoured crackers).

The night was very cold. Josh was surprised how cold it was but in Utah the summer nights do cool off and especially so in the mountains.

I did much better with cooking breakfast. We had pancakes and they really are my specialty. We also had Mark and Jeni's camping stove so it would have been hard to go wrong with that.

After breakfast we did some exploring around the lake.

I think Alex was planning on catching fish with that bag he is holding. Needless to say...

We had a great time despite our early challenges and were glad we went. We decided that we need to go camping as a family at least once a summer. We would also like to take Alex and Kate with us every time!