One of the great things about homeschooling is the flexibility it offers. We can have field trips as often as we want--even long ones. We decided to have a very long field trip this weekend and take our first ever camping trip together. We could leave early on a Friday without having to worry about the kids missing school. Heck, we could even make the camping trip part of school. What better way to learn about science and nature than to actually be in nature?
So this past weekend we took off for parts unknown. We went camping in the beautiful St. Charles Canyon in southeastern Idaho, just north of Bear Lake. We had never been there before, so it literally was "parts unknown".
Every camping trip has to have a few adventures along the way, right? Our first adventure was being in the car for an hour before we even left town. That's what happens when you're driving toward out of town and Daddy gets a phone call that there's a crisis at work. We then had an uneventful, though lengthy 3-hour drive to our destination. That's where the real fun began! Imagine unpacking the van, setting all the equipment out, and realizing that you left the bag of tent poles sitting in the garage at home. Yep, that's exactly what happened to us! Three hours from home, with storm clouds gathering overhead, and no way to set up the tent.
So I left James and the kids to set up the rest of our campsite, while I wandered around trying to figure out where to get us a tent. At that point, we hadn't driven through a town larger than about 200 people in oh, an hour. I ended up going another 25+ miles north of where we were to the thriving metropolis of Montpelier, Idaho, population 2700, to try and find a tent. Every little town has a Walmart within driving distance, right? Actually, WRONG. I went to the first little mom-and-pop discount store. They sold out of their tents two days before. There was one more option, I was told--another equally small mom-and-pop discount store. If they didn't have a tent, we were sunk. Good news: They did. Bad news: only one model was offered for sale, an ultra-fancy 8-person tent with a screened porch attached. What was so bad about that? The $140 price tag, that's what. But when your only other alternative is a night out in the open with storms in the forecast, you fork over the $140 pretty quick. We'll be doing ALOT of camping to pay for that tent!
So I headed back to camp, and we got our tent set up... about 15 minutes before the rain started. So much for roasting hot dogs over the fire. Instead, James cooked our supper in the pouring rain while the kids and I huddled under our shade canopy:
After dinner, the rain died down, and we did have fun the rest of the evening roasting marshmallows and other such great things, and of course, trying to keep our wild children from sending all the other campers packing with their noise.
Once we got everyone to bed, the real fun began. It started to rain again. And this time it didn't stop. Not only did the rain pour for hours, but around 2:00 am the thunder and lightning decided to join in. They lost no time in making their presence known, and the rain, thunder, and lightning had a jolly party for the next three hours while I lay wide awake praying to God that we wouldn't get struck. Dallin and Sariah, bless their hearts, slept through the whole thing:
The storm was seriously so bad that at least 5-6 other cars pulled out of the campground before dawn. About the only thing that kept us there was the reality that 1) we would have to drag all of us out in the rain to get to the car and 2) we had nowhere else to go.
But at 5:00 am, it all stopped. The storm stopped, the sun rose, and Saturday was a beautiful day that made it all completely worth it!
Does it get any better than this??? I was nervous about going camping for the first time on our own. Mostly, I was nervous about reserving a campsite without being able to see it ahead of time. I had visions of the dirty, trash-filled campgrounds around where we live. I must say, I was pleasantly surprised! I loved this campground so much that I'd come back here again in a heartbeat (though preferably with no rain). We didn't even get one of the better sites in the campground, but I'd still come back. If you ever want to go camping in Utah or Idaho, Cloverleaf Campground up St. Charles Canyon is the place to go! It was spotlessly clean; no litter anywhere. We were lucky enough to be very close to the bathrooms, which were also very clean. The entire site was gorgeous! I think ours was the only site that didn't have any shade, but luckily we had a canopy to remedy that. Most of the sites were filled with tall, beautiful evergreen trees and plenty of quakies.
This creek ran right next to the campground. About half the sites were right against the stream. It's probably best that ours wasn't, or the kids would have been even wetter than they were:
What is a camping trip without sticks?
In yet another surprising show of sibling solidarity, Dallin built this cute little log bridge so Sariah could get to the boulders in the middle of the stream. (The rocks were covered with beautiful bright green moss, grass, and leaves.)
We saw numerous chipmunks, had cattle literally almost in the camp itself, were awakened by the birds, and saw a swarm of huge dragonflies. The wildflowers were in abundance. It was truly a beautiful place!
Saturday morning we drove two miles up the road to Minnetonka Cave, where we took a 90-minute guided tour that was really cool. We could have gone hiking nearby if we hadn't lost so much time on Friday with the tent fiasco.
After we packed up, we went home through Garden City, Utah, which is right on Bear Lake. We had planned to stop at the lake so the kids could see it up close and personal, but we were too tired. Garden City is full of little mom-and-pop diners with wonderful hamburgers and shakes, so we enjoyed a fantastic lunch before we headed back through Logan Canyon, which was another breathtakingly scenic drive.
We are definitely going camping again next summer!
So this past weekend we took off for parts unknown. We went camping in the beautiful St. Charles Canyon in southeastern Idaho, just north of Bear Lake. We had never been there before, so it literally was "parts unknown".
Every camping trip has to have a few adventures along the way, right? Our first adventure was being in the car for an hour before we even left town. That's what happens when you're driving toward out of town and Daddy gets a phone call that there's a crisis at work. We then had an uneventful, though lengthy 3-hour drive to our destination. That's where the real fun began! Imagine unpacking the van, setting all the equipment out, and realizing that you left the bag of tent poles sitting in the garage at home. Yep, that's exactly what happened to us! Three hours from home, with storm clouds gathering overhead, and no way to set up the tent.
So I left James and the kids to set up the rest of our campsite, while I wandered around trying to figure out where to get us a tent. At that point, we hadn't driven through a town larger than about 200 people in oh, an hour. I ended up going another 25+ miles north of where we were to the thriving metropolis of Montpelier, Idaho, population 2700, to try and find a tent. Every little town has a Walmart within driving distance, right? Actually, WRONG. I went to the first little mom-and-pop discount store. They sold out of their tents two days before. There was one more option, I was told--another equally small mom-and-pop discount store. If they didn't have a tent, we were sunk. Good news: They did. Bad news: only one model was offered for sale, an ultra-fancy 8-person tent with a screened porch attached. What was so bad about that? The $140 price tag, that's what. But when your only other alternative is a night out in the open with storms in the forecast, you fork over the $140 pretty quick. We'll be doing ALOT of camping to pay for that tent!
So I headed back to camp, and we got our tent set up... about 15 minutes before the rain started. So much for roasting hot dogs over the fire. Instead, James cooked our supper in the pouring rain while the kids and I huddled under our shade canopy:
But at 5:00 am, it all stopped. The storm stopped, the sun rose, and Saturday was a beautiful day that made it all completely worth it!
We saw numerous chipmunks, had cattle literally almost in the camp itself, were awakened by the birds, and saw a swarm of huge dragonflies. The wildflowers were in abundance. It was truly a beautiful place!
After we packed up, we went home through Garden City, Utah, which is right on Bear Lake. We had planned to stop at the lake so the kids could see it up close and personal, but we were too tired. Garden City is full of little mom-and-pop diners with wonderful hamburgers and shakes, so we enjoyed a fantastic lunch before we headed back through Logan Canyon, which was another breathtakingly scenic drive.
We are definitely going camping again next summer!
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