Camping

We haven't gone camping in ages, more like since before Katelyn. So that's been at least 2 years. Jason surprised me one Wednesday and called to tell me to pack up and think about what to take for food for camping. An added extra bonus was taking our Pastor's camper. We were planning to go with friends and meet them at Lily Lake in the Beartooth mountains on Thursday night. Jason completed his last day at the Cody hospital on Thursday and took off friday. So we packed up, had to make a few stops and borrow a friend's canoe and finally got up to the campground before it got dark. The mosquitos were unforgiving. The worst I've seen since living here. It brought me back to my Manitoba days. We spent our evening in the camper, swatting at the bugs so we could sleep without the constant buzzing in our ears. This wasn't a regular campground with designated spots with utilities. You park where you want and bring your own utilities. Roughing it with a camper. Thankfully we had a camper to retreat too. A tent just would not have been any fun.

Friday, we ventured to the lake in hopes of going for a canoe ride with K. We bought her a life jacket, which brought on a crying/temper fit that last for probably 20-30 mins. A lot of spankings later and some time in the truck finally brought that to an end. We went for a quick ride around the lake until someone got restless again.
There was still a lot of snow in the mountains which makes the rivers really bad for fishing because of all of the melt off.

After a nap, our friends arrived with their daughter and son-in-law and a couple of their friends. Everyone brought steaks for supper, so we had some serious meat grilling over the fire.
The bugs were bad so our friend Quin brought his fogger and fogged. It helped a lot. Everyone had their dogs along, so they were all kept occupied by playing fetch down the hill from the trailers.

Getting some firewood for the fire

Saturday was slated as "Adventure Day". The guys wanted to go fishing and cave exploring. The girls headed to the bank of the lake for some Craw-dad fishing. Craw dads or Crawfish are like super mini lobsters. It takes a lot of them to make you feel full. Lily Lake is the only place these things live and everyone local that knows about Lily lake says "you gotta get some craw dads."
Bacon is the bait of choice, or hot dogs. We took the bacon root. Tie it onto your fishing pole, put it in the water and wait. Wait until they get a good grip on the bacon and slowly lift it out of the water and into your net. They usually let go and then they go into a cooler of water. Katelyn had fun for the first half hour. Once you start seeing them it becomes quite the goal to hook the big ones. She would see them and say something like "Gottem Mommy" and I would scoop them into the net. She would put her bacon back in the water and wait. She caught quite a few before she lost some interest. We were there all morning. The guys came back and got in on some of the action. We got quite a lot and then Quin and Tracy's son and some of his friends showed up and got some more. So for supper they put them in some beer to soak and then boiled them. They turned red like lobsters. We caught so many that with all of the people we had there, I don't think we made a dent in the pot.

A nutritious meal of mac and cheese. Perfect camping food

That night we opted to stay in the camper for our meal of sausages, beans and baked potatoes. It actually got quite cold during the night which lead to sleeping 3 in the king size bed. It also helped K to fall asleep since it was a strange place. The poured during the night too which made us extra thankful to be in a trailer. We did have a few problems. We lost all of our water because of a loose plug and we couldn't use the bathroom, so we had to go in the grass which led to bites on our "cheeks". Not the most comfortable. I let K use our friends bathroom since it was just easier for everyone involved. Oh well, it made for an adventure.

Sunday morning was breakfast and loading up. We still got home only at 2:30 pm and we didn't stop cleaning up and laundry until 8pm. Somehow the clean up takes longer than the packing.

We had a great time even with all the extra people. Tracy is always prepared and brought enough food for the extras.