A Camping We Will Go

 

After all the trauma of the dogs, we decided to go on a short little camping trip up to Long’s Park.  By far this is my favorite place to stay and fish, not only because someone is almost guaranteed to catch something, but there seems to be fewer mosquitoes around.

 

 

We dropped our puppies off at Nancy’s house (which she thoroughly enjoyed) and headed up the mountain Sunday afternoon.  We took our horse trailer with living quarters to stay in and set up camp rather quickly.  We were bums and didn’t build a fire that night, but it was all fun anyway.  We went for a twilight drive and saw a herd of elk about a mile from our camp.  I've seen a couple of elk here and there but never that many up there.  It was neat to see, but Stetzen started screeching at them and the took off.  When we got back we made some sandwhiches and headed to bed.  

 

Stetzen's lovely hairdo after the sunscreen was applied by Dad.

 

Side note:  I was one that said campers were a big waste of money when tents are just as good.  But, having a baby changes your opinions.  I loved being able to have something to stay in that I knew he wouldn’t freeze or get nasty bugs everywhere. 

 

Waitin for some fishies...

 

Back to camping…The next morning we got up and made breakfast burritos and then headed to the reservoir to do some fishing.  As tradition goes with us, we have a competition when we fish of who will catch the first fish and the most.  I will preface this by saying we tied!  But, if you ask Zach he’ll say he won.  Anyways, we headed towards our usual place, but some little boys were there.  We debated whether or not to stay, but ended up sticking it out until they left.  Once they did, the real fishing began!  I think I had my line out for about 15 minutes when I caught THE first fish.  It wasn’t too bad on size, so I decided to keep it.  Sadly, though, I wasn’t quick enough to get Zach the camera to document it.  A few minutes later Zach caught one, and the race was on. 

 

My Second Fish...

 

In between all of this we were constantly wrestling Stetzen to keep him entertained.  If you didn’t keep an eye on him, he’d be playing with the worms or trying to eat the fish bait or even reeling in your line.  It was a little bit of a struggle to keep him excited about sitting in the chair with you.  As I was holding Stetzen, I felt a tug on my line and frantically asked Zach to reel it in for me, but by the time he got a hold of it, it got away.  Zach threw my line back in for me and recast his.  Not even two seconds after he did, he had a fish on the line.  I would like to think he caught the one I lost, hence beating me in his eyes.  After that, we didn’t have much luck in the fishing department so we went back to camp.

 

The fishing haul

 

 We sat around camp and ate some lunch, and then decided to go for a drive around the mountain.  I guess Zach got bored of having nothing to do, so we ended up driving down to his mom’s house and chilling there for a couple of hours.  When we headed back up, Brands wanted to go fishing so we took him with us and headed back to Long’s Park.  When we got up there the boys were back, so primo fishing spot was taken.  This time the battle was all won by Brands.  He was the first and only person to catch a fish that night. 

 

Here I am looking super stylish...lol

 

When all was said and done, we headed back to camp, started a fire, rambled on about funny nothings, cooked a delish dutch oven dinner, and headed to bed.  The next morning we packed up and headed home.  It was a nice little get away, but I wish we could have stayed a couple more days.  Last summer we didn’t go camping at all, so I wanted to get my fill this summer.  Hopefully we make it back again before the summer’s over.