This last week, our family went camping in the Uintahs. It was lovely. Thanks to my brother and sister-in-law for sharing their property with us and thanks to Mother Nature for spending the last hundred million years or so preparing a lovely place where we could unwind for a few fabulous days.
(And stay tuned for a video tour of the "dangerous" inhabitants of this tiny piece of the mountains at the end of this post.)
We encountered different degrees of acceptance to the sentence of "camping" which was pronounced upon our children whether they liked it or not. Some of them arranged their spot in the tent trailer with all the tidy comforts of home while others packed their favorite D&D game boards to entertain themselves despite being surrounded by the great outdoors. Sigh.
We did do a bit of face painting (that's a camping activity, right?).
But we also started to add a second story to the lean-to which has now survived two full winters on this property (these are the kinds of shenanigans cousins get into when they get together...also, we put a stop to it until we can find it a way to make it less precarious).
One morning, the DeMoux crew hiked nearly two miles from the ranger station up to Lily Lake (boy was Aubrey upset when she realized we could have driven to the lake instead...but oh those views).
It was here that we broke a curse which has haunted us for more than a year and we caught a bunch of fish. That doesn't normally happen for us, but it makes the trip a LOT more exciting when everyone has the chance to reel in an aquatic creature or two.
Silly kidlets.
Regular kidlets.
The next day we did a second fishing expedition to Whitney Reservoir which was a much bigger puddle of water, but the fishing was not quite as good (but we still managed to wrangle some finned fiends to shore).
We played around in the river with our cousins, ate dirty food (yes, Parker did take a bite of that crusty cupcake), rode ATVs (some people yelling "FASTER!" and others yelling "SLOW DOWN!"), encountered many much moosen (that's moose plural for anyone not so familiar with Brian Reagan), and then tumbled eight people into the camper each night playing games like Encore and Truth or Truther (kind of like Truth or Dare for people who are too lazy to stand up).
And last, but not least, we filmed the first ever episode (and likely last ever episode) of DeMoux Wild. It was the favorite project of several of our kiddos. You can watch it for free below.
All in all, camping was a wonderful way to spend the week. It was GREAT to get away from our regular life and be FORCED to spend ALL the time with each other. We'll have to do it again sometime soon.
