Another Memorial Day to Remember

Last year I wrote about my Memorial Day Weekend tradition of camping with my family.  I mentioned how the weather usually never cooperates with our plans of camping yet we decided to tough out the weather and go camping anyway.  Last year my Memorial Day Weekend was summed up with the picture below of my tent and my Jeep in our camping area.

Camping Memorial Day 2012

Fortunately this year, the weather was a lot more cooperative and was actually one of the best years for weather we have had in a long time!  Last year my wife was about 8 months pregnant and misserable the whole time.  This year was probably one of my favorite times camping because I was able to share it with my daughter who is 11 months old now. 

The area we traditionally camp at for this weekend is not necessarily the most remote area but it is away from the majority of people.  We camp next to a little creek and spend most of our time hanging out by the camp fire catching up with all of our family members.  We also spend a lot of time with family members fishing in the creek catching small Brook Trout.  My daughter loved this part of the camping trip because she decided she liked the feel of squeezing a slimy fish in her hand. 

The look on her face should tell you how much fun she was having

Of course at her age, she puts everything she can touch into her mouth... everything.... yes including the fish...

The look on my face shows you I was grossed out while laughing :)

I think the nicest part of any camping trip is not necessarily in the location, the activities, the weather, or length of time of the camping trip but rather it is is who it is with and how you spend that time.  While I went up in the mountains to one of my favorite spots since childhood, this camping trip is special because it was the first one with my daughter.  When I would have liked to spend more time maybe shooting guns or fishing in the creek, I enjoyed the time sitting next to the creek with my wife and daughter picking flowers and playing in the grass. 

I don't want to make it sound like that is all we did, but I never thought in all my perivious camping trips in this location that I would spend a good portion of my time picking flowers and playing in the grass while camping.  We did get to enjoy some good fishing trips in the creek and we also spent a lot of time with family around the campfire.  Life does change when you have kids yet the change is more of a refocusing on what really matters rather than changing. 

 

We ended off the weekend by visiting my grandpa's grave site which has been part of our family tradition for Memorial Day weekend.  We usually take up something my grandpa would have liked such as a pine tree or some other outdoors item.  This year we took a shed antler from a deer and placed in on his headstone. 

I am looking forward to more camping trips with my wife and daughter this summer where I will be able to share with her some of my other favorite areas such as taking her backpacking into some of my elk hunting spots on scouting trips and other hikes into the mountains.  I know this trips may not be my most successful in sneaking around the woods looking for wildlife but as I spend my time wisely with my wife and daughter I have come to the conclusion that the man upstairs makes up for the less successful scouting trips in the end.  

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