Memorial Day Madness

As long as I can remember, my family has always gone camping on Memorial Day weekend.  Some of my favorite memories from childhood have to do with camping and fishing with my family on Memorial Day weekend.  Unfortunately, here in South Eastern Idaho, the weather isn't always cooperative with our plan to spend the four day weekend up in the woods.  This year, the weather report said it was going to rain pretty much the whole weekend.  In spite of the weather, our family decided we were still going to give it a shot. Friday afternoon rolled around and my wife and I decided to head up and set up our camp.  The weather was spotty with gusts of wind and occasional rain showers, but we had camped in worse so we felt good about heading up.  We got within a couple of miles from our camp site and the road was blocked by some fallen trees due to the gusts of wind.  The rain had picked up a little on our drive up so I decided to be a good Samaritan and clear the road while waiting for the storm to pass so that I wouldn't be setting up my tent in the rain.

Me sawing away at the fallen trees

After clearing the road, the rain stopped so we finished the drive and set up camp.  Pretty much every year we camp in the same spot right next to a small creek where we spend hours and hours running up and down the mountains, shooting guns, shooting our bows, and fishing in the creek catching our limit of small brook trout.  These fish are definitely not monsters, but they are some of the best tasting fish I've ever had!  After my whole family had showed up, we now had a camp with over 20 people hanging out having a good time! we sat around the camp fire cooking hot dogs and catching up with what was going on in everyone's lives. When the weather was good we would hang out by the creek catching as many fish as we could in hopes of having a big fish fry at the end of our trip. Unfortunately the good weather did not last long and the relaxing times next to the campfire soon turned into a few brainless men standing by the campfire getting rained on.  Like I have mentioned this isn't the first time we've been rained on while camping on Memorial Day, in fact, to quote the women of our camp I'll say, "It just wouldn't be Memorial Day weekend if it didn't rain on us!".  So we roughed it out the best we could the rest of the day Saturday, and hoped that we would wake up the next morning and have decent weather to finish our camping trip.

 Now would be a good time to remind those of you that know me that my wife is currently pregnant with our first child.  She is due the first part of July.  So for those of you who can do math and know anything about pregnancy, you will know that my wife is far enough along in her pregnancy to make this camping trip even more of an adventure than it already is.  Her biggest concern about camping this weekend was her comfort while sleeping in a tent while being over 7 months pregnant. It was my job this weekend to make sure she was comfortable and having a good time.  Me being the husband I am, (despite how much I love camping and fishing) I'll admit, this camping trip wouldn't have been any fun for me if my wife wasn't having a good time.  My enjoyment comes from sharing what means the most to me with the ones I love.  My favorite part of camping is by far spending time with my wife relaxing and fishing in the same places I remember fishing as a kid.  Sure enough, she was a trooper even with the weather being far from perfect.  So when we went to sleep Saturday night I was hoping for a day with better weather that would allow my wife and I to spend the day together fishing in the creek.  It was raining when we got to our tent and the temperature was dropping a bit so I turned on both of our Buddy Heaters we had and called it a night!

 

The next morning wasn't quite the way I had hoped the night before... When we woke up, the ground was covered with snow and our tent was close to collapsing due to the weight of the snow on top of our tent!  Once again, this is not the first time it has snowed on us while camping on Memorial Day, but what was different is that it kept snowing, and snowing, and snowing all the way until noon on Sunday Afternoon! 

Our Tent in the snow!

My Jeep and Tent in the snow!

Trying to warm up

My wife watching the snow melt

Sadly enough, we decided to head back to the house and finish our camping weekend with a big Dutch oven dinner at my grandparent's house.  As good as the food was, it wasn't quite the same as it would have been when camping, but given the weather I guess it was okay.  When Monday rolled around my wife and I woke up and felt that we got shorted on our outdoors weekend, so we decided to head back up to our camping spot and finish what we had started!  My wife and I got up to the creek and fished for a few hours.  We caught a few fish and had a blast doing all we could to enjoy the outdoors and get our minds off of work!  We had a blast spending Memorial Day together doing what we had planned on doing even though the rest of the weekend didn't necessarily go as planned.  We will be heading up again in a couple of weeks to give it another try and I'll be sure to write about it then!

Sarah creek fishing

Sarah with a little brook trout

Me cleaning the fish