Honestly, family means a lot to us, and we really do love getting together with the ones we love so much. Being in the great outdoors is a great bonus! We wanted to make the most of our time there, and do all that we could. Almost every morning, Alyssa & Darcie and I would either exercise, or go for a hike. There were some great views!
(A lot of our fun moments were captured with the phone camera, because that's what was handy!)
We took Stella with us, and she's one pup who can pull you right up the mountain. The flip side is trying to put the brakes on when heading back downhill.
Darcie (and Alyssa, too) is much more of a risk-taker than I am. I have to say that my heart was pounding much harder from seeing her live life on the edge, than it was from just the uphill climb.
Part of Emma's 17 Adventures (here and HERE) were fulfilled when we went 4-wheeling. Once Todd got hold of a topographical map of the area, we went out often:
(That's Shelly and Andy in the side-by-side behind me.)
Only 3 machines, so we doubled up on riders....
This shot of Alys and Emma is so classic. Alyssa is absolutely covered in trail dust, and Emma? Well, just like her siblings used to do when they were small, Miss Emma fell asleep on the ride!
Helmets are heavy!
We rode up to an old fire lookout tower. Wish the local wildfires might not have blocked our views with the smoke that day. (The guys had a better view, earlier in the morning.)
See the haze?
When we weren't out and about, we hung around the campsite, ....
Playing games, swapping stories, doing meal prep.
The girls did some crafts ...
... and we laughed a lot.
Todd checked the map for additional ride options.
In addition to our favorite card games, we played other things, like ladder golf ....
And I loved watching my girls play a little catch again:
One morning was the horseback ride ...
When they came back, they fed the horses some snacks. Darcie was the Horse Whisperer:
Some of our meals were straight out of my kids' childhood camping trips, like our traditional foil dinners, s'mores, and Dutch Oven enchiladas:
(No leftovers after that one!) We also tried some new-to-us camping foods ... like Chicken-Bacon-Ranch foil dinners. And Campfire Cones (s'mores in ice cream sugar-cones). Yum!! We found two new winners here!
Stella finally had a puppy playmate in Sophie:
And she got some lessons in how to be a calm doggie. Calm was way hard to learn, but she definitely made great progress.
On our final night, we took some family pictures, and reminisced around the campfire about family memories. It was just a really, really nice evening!
We loved having Kerry and Shelly there -- they are the ones who live the farthest away, so we enjoy every moment we get with them!
The whole group:
Here's a clip of Weld, telling his story of going floating on the Selway River - about 20 years ago. The water was really cold, and he was attempting to get launched on the innertube -- while wearing swim flippers:
(Turn up the volume, it's not real loud, and hit the full-screen icon, too.)
And finally -- one more story of floating the Selway river. This is Shelly telling of the time she got dumped out of her innertube, and got tossed underwater:
(Wish I'd kept the video going longer -- I don't know what Jason was about to say!!)
We wouldn't trade these memories for anything.
LOVE our Huffaker family!!!
Precious memories! Yeay for horse back ridding!
ReplyDelete