Happy Little Campers

By now I think everyone has figured out that I hate camping, and being dirty. I'm pretty sure it consumes all of my blog posts. But despite all of that we went camping! It was cold and dirty, but it was fun! We went with Jim's really good friend CJ and his wife Savanna. CJ and Jim and very much alike in that they like to camp, and Savanna and I like to shop and be clean and complain about being dirty. You can see where this camping trip is headed...

We left Sunday afternoon and headed up to Payson. We got there and picked up some last minute things for dinner and continued on our way to... well I have no idea where it was. We past a town called Pine, and I think another small town called Strawberry. I thought we were almost there, but nope. We drove and drove and drove to "the rim" or whatever and then we were off the pavement driving on rocks. After about 20-30 minutes of a miserable drive off road we finally found somewhere to camp. When I jumped out of the car every memory of girls camp came back to me. The pine tree smell was enough to remind me that I REALLY REALLY don't like camping! But Jim loves it so I was all about being a good sport.

the boys set up the camp while Savanna and I watched. I really had no idea how to help! It was really fun watching the boys gather the wood for the fire, and then they even let us "help" them chop some of it!

Look how strong my man is, just throwing some logs around... no big deal

Here's Savanna showing the guys how to really chop some wood

The boys taking a break from all their hard work

As the night went on we grew hungry. We planned on eating some hobo dinners and we were all very excited about them. The one time I've had a hobo dinner before it was amazing! I expected nothing less especially since I had to sleep in the dirt later. As CJ was preparing dinner he realized that they forgot the tin foil!! When we had stopped earlier Savanna and I were assigned to stay with the truck and make sure nothing was taken. We were both NOT ok with this but somehow we "trusted" out men to take care of us. We should have made them stay with the truck. Needless to say I was upset and so was Savanna. We were about an hour from the nearest town! AN HOUR!! CJ and Savanna jumped in th truck and headed back and Jim and I set up the sleeping arrangements. About 10 minutes later they returned. They stopped to ask some of our fellow outdoors-men for some tin foil. We didn't have very much but we managed to get everything in there... kind of.

Here's CJ taking care of our dinners, before he stapped a huge whole in the side of ours :)

In the mean time while dinners were cooking I had a flash back. I sat next to the fire trying to stay warm and I look at Jim and what did I find him doing? Cutting down a very small tree, and then carving it! When Jim and I met he had spent the whole night carving what I like to call a savage stick. Because of that stick I started talking to him. It was cute to sit next to him as he made me a roasting stick, opposed to another savage stick.

Jim with his small tree...

That turned into a roasting stick

Putting the roasting stick to work!

As we waited for dinner to cook Jim decided that roasting the potatoes with a slice of onion was the way to go! Turns out that Potatoes aren't that good alone... or roasted on a stick with an onion. When we were finally able to eat our dinners they weren't that good. We all ate it and were very very disappointed. I like to think that it's because the girls didn't get to do the shopping :)

Later we went spot lighting. I've never done this before but it was WAY fun! We drove around for about 45 minutes and didn't see anything and I just wanted to go to bed, but then we saw two elk. I was ok with that and didn't really feel like we had wasted our time. As we kept driving we saw in a little meadow about 10 more elk. It was way cooler then the first time. As Jim moved the spot light across the meadow we saw another set of eyes, but they were lower to the ground and moving really smooth and slow. It was a mountain lion!! It had been stalking the group of Elk and started to run back into the forest. We were all super thrilled, I've never seen grown men more excited about anything in my life! We drove for about 10 more minutes and turned around. As we approached the meadow again all the elk were still there but the mountain lion had taken off, or so we thought. He had moved to the other side of the meadow and was STILL stalking them. I felt bad for the poor elk. They had no idea they were about to get eaten. We got back to our camp and we were all tuckered out.

When we woke up in the morning Savanna and I were ready to be city girls again. We tried to hurry up the boys and get everything packed up so that we could use flushing toilets again. That wasn't exactly the case... As we cleaned up...

The boys played guns (I love CJ's outfit)

All in all, the weekend was fun! We needed some time away from real life and just kind of "relax". If nothing else we had a great time with our friends! Thanks CJ and Savanna!