Campering

We spent 24 hours camping in a camper (thus, campering) in the mountains recently and loved it!  The kids have been saying they want to camp since the summer and we finally just picked a weekend and rented a camper to try.  Ben decided we should go to the Granite Flats campground just above Tibble Fork Reservoir in American Fork Canyon.

We knew it was going to be a cold rainy weekend - the first really cold and rainy weekend of the fall - but figured it would be okay since we would have a place to go and be dry, and we'd be dry while we were sleeping.  It turned out that the canvas layers around the push-out beds did leak but it wasn't too bad and the heater worked, so that was nice.  It would have been much worse if we'd been in tents.

We brought our canopy so that we could set it up over the campfire, since it's not camping if you can't sit around a campfire.  And because Cat and I came a little later, Ben got the camper and the canopy set up as the only adult, with the help of the younger kids.  Go Ben!

Tin Foil dinners are the best.

It was great to have a warm, dry place to eat.

We made a simple campfire "peach cobbler" using a jar of peaches, 3 crumbled
biscuits, some butter, and cinnamon sugar.  Add some canned whipped
cream and it was a pretty yummy camping dessert.

I picked up a Disney villain puzzle to work on that night but the 1000 pieces
was too ambitious, haha.  At least we realized we could save the sections we'd finished
by wrapping them in tin foil.  We listened to The Legend of Sleepy Hollow
while we puzzled.

Jack wanted to sleep by himself, but these three wanted to snuggle
together in one of the queen-sized push-out beds.  They slept pretty well,
in spite of some dripping water.

The next morning Eliza came up with a new campfire treat:
Roasted Airborne Sour Strip-Wrapped Starburst.
It was yummy.  S'mores were also part of the breakfast-period.

We had bacon and eggs, plus campfire muffins in orange peels for our (main) breakfast.

Cat loves the rain.  And the hail.

Mountain background for a family selfie before Cat left for work.

Campber background.

After Cat left we went on a little drive to Silver Lake Flat Reservoir.  The fall colors of the leaves on the trees were beautiful, especially as they speckled the dark green evergreen trees on the mountain.  Add in the clouds and the new snow from the night before and it was really awesome.  We stopped at the trailhead for Silver Lake but just hiked for about 15 minutes along the stream, then turned around.  It was really nice to get out and walk around for a little while, in spite of the cold and drizzle.  And the Aspen trees were such a brilliant shade of yellow!

After our short drive and hike we went back to our campsite to eat a little lunch and pack up.  It was a great little trip!

Fun to see a visitor near our campsite.

Hooray for campering!