Vernal camping trip 2012

Here is what we did last weekend over my birthday:

Wednesday 9/12/12

On the road

After getting everything packed up, I loaded the girls into the very-stuffed van and went down to SLC to pick James up from work. We had to wait for a few minutes parked on the side of 200 W near 400 S since James works in a building that doesn't exactly have visitor parking. He finally arrived and we went to McDonald's for a snack before leaving for Park City. Funny thing at McDonald's: There was a man at the entrance holding a cardboard sign that said something like "Unemployed. 5 kids. Anything helps.". We drove by him and got our food at the drive-through. Then as we leave there is that same man standing on the other side of the parking lot at the exit. He must have realized people aren't likely to stop to give him anything at the entrance, so he moved to the exit where everyone has to stop for traffic anyways.

As we get onto the freeway to Park City, I remember that I have a bottle of motion sickness pills in my bag and take two so as to avoid nausea on the road. I didn't know how close Park City is to SLC, and I forgot how numb the pills make me, so by the time we got to Park City my body had fallen asleep even though my brain was mostly awake. It was hard to talk because my tongue was asleep and my arms didn't want to move. So we didn't spend much time walking around the outlet stores even though I really wanted to. I think next time I have to take those, I'll try taking just one.

Our original plan was to sleep in the car in the Heber City area this first night. Once we got the car all packed though, we realized we wouldn't be able to utilize the lay-down backseat to sleep. James' boss asked earlier where we were staying and, once he heard about our plans, made us take the company credit card and rent a hotel room for the night. We stopped at Holiday Inn in Heber City, but they had no vacancies. So we drove up the road a little and stopped at M Star Hotel and they had one room left. This particular hotel is one that most "civilized" people would feel yucky about staying in, but I checked the beds for bedbugs, and upon finding none I let James know this was a great place to spend the night. We ordered Dominoes pizza, ate that, and went to sleep. So far on the trip the girls have been pretty well behaved, and I was feeling rather proud of myself for raising such well-mannered children.

Thursday 9/13/12

We got up and got dressed and James had the girls give me my birthday card and gifts. I got a bumper sticker that says "I "heart" "bagpipe" "music". The words in quotations were actually clipart. They also gave me a Scotland flag patch for my bagpipe case. So we packed up and left the room key at the office and headed off to Fruitland (between Park City and Duchesne), James' first stop for the weekend's work. We had apple and lemon pies in the car for breakfast. Molly loved those things. Annie just liked them.

We met up with someone in Fruitland and they led us up the canyon to a very nice cabin. We then proceeded to hack him to death with an ax, cut him up into pieces with a chainsaw, and bury him in several unmarked locations around the property surrounding the cabin. JUST KIDDING!!!! We sat around for a couple hours while he packed up some stuff he left in the cabin over the summer so it doesn't go bad during the winter. That cabin was beautiful though, and it had a pretty nice view.

While we were at the cabin, Annie showed us some of her tumbling stuff and we have come to realize that she is really into it. She has been practicing this thing where she does a handstand, holds it for a couple seconds, and then falls into a backbend. She's got it to where she almost never bonks her head on the ground (strong arms).

Don't let our smiles fool you... it wasn't a fun night.

We finished up at the cabin and drove to the campground. James chose the Green River campground just past Vernal in the Dinosaur National Monument park. We got there and the girls instantly gravitated to the big awesome rock that happened to have a red ant hill under it. That rock continued to seduce the girls the rest of the weekend. Anyways, we set up the awesome 3-room tent we got with a portion of James' last bonus from work and got dinner started. We decided to have sandwiches for dinner since we were pretty beat from setting up camp. Well, not long into dinner Molly's hand slipped on the table and she fell off. That was fun. Then after dinner Molly was running around and tripped over her own feet and scraped up her hands. Then while we were getting the fire started, Annie also fell off the table. Then Annie's good mood was ruined and she started fought with molly for the rest of the night. We put them to bed and just sat in silence for an hour or so before deciding it was cold enough to go to bed ourselves.

Friday 9/14/12

Learning how to fuel up a car... never too early, right?

We all woke up pretty happy, except for James because during the night the girls crowded him out of the bed space and onto the cold tent floor. He slept on the other side of the bed with a sweater on the rest of the weekend. I got the camp stove lit and got the frying pan heated up for pancakes and the water warmed for "hot" chocolate. By the time breakfast was ready, it was time to go into Vernal to meet with some other people for James' work. We snarfed down one pancake each and cleaned up the mess and drove into town. While James was working, I went to Walmart and got some ice for the cooler and a new pump for the camp stove.

Campfire hot dogs

As soon as James was done we went to Wendy's for lunch and then went back to the campground. I fixed the camp stove and then we went for a walk mainly to get in the shade since the camp spot we picked didn't have any shade at all. It was really hot. We explored the river and threw some rocks and took some pictures and then we went back and did up dinner. We did hot dogs over the fire (Annie loved it). Then we got out the marshmallows and other s'mores fixin's only to find out the chocolate (which had been in the tent all day) was all melted. After a few minutes in the ice cooler, we were able to work with the chocolate for s'mores. Annie even lit her marshmallow on fire (and started waving it around just like it Dennis the Menace...). Molly tripped several times more and bonked her head on the table edge many more times and was upset that she couldn't drag her blankie around like she does at home. We slept pretty well that night anyways.

Saturday 9/15/12

We slept in a little longer since I had the presence of mind not to drink a soda right before going to bed the previous night. I got up after the sun started warming up the camp and tried to start the camp stove for eggs and bacon. Turns out we ran out of kerosene. So after about half an hour of whining to myself about how I didn't pack the kerosene bottle, I had James build a fire and we cooked the eggs and bacon there. The bacon grease gave us some pretty neat flames! Speaking of flames, we had a 5-gal bucket with water in it nearby to extinguish the fire, and Molly thought that was the funnest thing to play in all weekend. She would grab lots of dirt, drop it in the bucket, swish it around real good with her hands, and repeat. It drove me nuts! So much mud! I don't mind dirt while camping, but mud is a completely different story. Oh, and she kept trying to pick up the bumblebee that committed suicide in the bucket the first night. Argh!

 

Touching a real dinosaur bone!

After breakfast, we drove over to the Dinosaur National Monument and took the tram up the canyon to the Dinosaur Quarry. We learned that the canyon used to be a river and all the dinosaurs that died along the river would be swept downstream and their carcasses collected in places such as this canyon. It was rather fascinating to all of us and we had a ton of fun there. The girls were so good for us too!

The quarry

Manny the Mammoth!

Then we drove into Vernal to visit the Utah Field House of Natural History and watched a short video there and saw all kinds of exhibits pertaining to (what else?) natural history. That was awesome as well. We went to the gift shop there and Molly immediately latched onto the plush dinosaurs, so we ended up getting her a stuffed tyrannosaurus. She loves that thing. 

We had lunch at Pizza Hut (nope, we didn't get pizza... we got two pans of their chicken alfredo and meat marinara pastas... yummm) and then drove back to camp. Since it was so hot there, we immediately went to the river and took our shoes off and did some wading. Molly did not like the water so James had to carry her the whole time, while complaining that there were too many rocks for his not-so-strong feet. Annie didn't like walking around barefoot either so she stayed on land most of the time.

I had a blast in the water! It was so much fun! Well, since the other guys weren't having as much fun, we walked upstream for awhile and found a place with lots of great skipping rocks and some sand and the girls did the sand thing and James did the skipping-rock thing, and I just sat on the grass and took pictures. We stayed for as long as we could before it was time for dinner.

Hobo Dinner goodness

We went back to the tent and James got the fire lit. I got out the makings for Hobo Dinners and we cooked those on the coals and had a dinner that was better than most dinners we have at home. Pork strips, potatoes, carrots, onion... it was delicious. The girls even ate their food... I was worried neither of them would eat any of it since it's not sugar. There was more falling off the table, tripping, fighting, etc so we pretty much relaxed in the tent for the rest of the night. I worked some on a crossword puzzle and James just sat in silence (...?).









Sunday 9/16/12

We got up, had pop tarts and fruit bars for breakfast (James tried to use some leftover pancake batter but it had separated too much and turned out pretty bad), and packed everything up. The girls were terrors during the packing, of course. We got everything into the van and left our campsite looking better than when we arrived, per the official camping law (hehe). We drove home, unpacked, relaxed, enjoyed our nice cool apartment, and that's the end of my story. Tada!

At the river