Camping and Other Adventures

A couple of weekends ago, Danny and I went camping up in a canyon north of Logan, in a place called Richmond. The canyon was High Creek Campground. It was so much fun! We really enjoy camping and this is the first time we've been able to go all summer, so we were pretty excited. Here are some fun pictures:

Our lovely tent & campground setup

Danny, after setting up the tent. 

Our friends, Skyler and Chelsea, who came up to join us for hot dogs, smores and our dutch oven dessert

Our cherry black forest soda cake, which was made in the Dutch Oven.

Yeah, the cake looks like a pile of goo, but it was very good and very rich! It went a lot better than our cobbler last year. We hope to get good at the Dutch oven...we will see how that goes.

Last weekend, we went down to the Tooele County Fair.

Check out this quilting...this is really difficult to do, so I had to get a picture.

We also went to the demo derby, which was definitely the best derby we've been to! 

If you haven't ever been to a derby, you should go - it's a great opportunity to people watch! America's finest go to the demo derbys :)

Last night, we went to the Cache County Fair and Rodeo. We hadn't been to a rodeo all summer, so this was great! It was a lot of fun. Our camera didn't get great pictures of the rodeo, so I only included one of a kid mutton bustin'

This was our 3rd attempt at a picture of us together...we weren't very great at it, but this one was the best out of the 3

And we saw the funniest thing at the rodeo. I'm not sure if they do this at every rodeo, but they started off the events by inviting all 8-12 year old kids down into the arena. They then brought out some cow calves with ribbons pinned to them. They lined the kids up and yelled, 'Go!' The kids then chased the calves, who immediately started running. If you got a pink ribbon, it was a $5 prize, and if it was a blue ribbon, it was $10, I think. But seriously, the funniest thing ever - watching all these kids chasing these cows around the arena! :)

Wellsville Hike

So, a couple Saturdays ago, we went hiking with Danny's sister's family, the Rodemacks. They live here in Logan so we see them quite often and they invited us to go on a hike with them in preparation for their hike up Mt. Saint Helen's in a few weeks. We agreed...that was our first mistake. :)

Before setting out on this trip, it was decided that their 18-month old son would come with us by way of a backpack harness thing. Kyle was the first to carry him and we got a mile in and reached Cold Water 'Lake'. This is the only body of water in the Wellsville Mountains, so we had to get a picture.

So, after this point, Danny takes the pack with Cannon and we trudge on for about another mile. At this point, Kyle is unable to keep going due to a brace he has that was hurting him. So he turns around and heads back down and me, Danny and Melissa decide to keep going. We figured we were about halfway there-ish. We had read that it was a little over 3 miles to the Wellsville Ridge and another mile or so to the Wellsville Cone. So we keep going...

and going...

and going...

and we finally make it to the top!

Here is the Cache Valley side:

And here is the Box Elder side:

Very pretty! Yeah...we stopped for lunch after a long while, and we talked about whether we should keep going. I was ready to give up, as was Melissa. Then, these guys were coming down the mountain and they told us that we were about 2/3 of the way to the ridge. At this point, I'm like, 'Are you kidding?! Only 2/3 of the way?? I was expecting at least 7/8...' But Danny convinced us to keep going. At this point, we kind of split up along the trail. Danny trudged on first, basically without stopping. I was about 5 minutes behind him, complaining out loud and yelling at the annoying bugs. And Melissa was another 5-10 minutes behind me. But I'm glad we all made it to the top, it was incredible!

As we were going up, we agreed among ourselves that there was NO WAY that Kyle/Cannon could have made it to the top. These are the steepest mountains in the world we are talking about here...There were steep parts, overgrown parts, rocky parts and non-path parts. On our way down, we decided to take some pictures of a couple of crazy parts of the trail.

Here, we have Melissa, Tarzan-ing it across this part of the trail. It's seriously not flat at all. If you don't use the tree branches, you would definitely fall. 

Here is Danny at the beginning of the overgrown part of the trail. At this point we take like, 5 steps each, I give the camera to Danny and he takes this picture of me (see if you can find me...I can't!)

I promise I'm in there somewhere. But this is what the trail looked like. I actually had to stop on the way up (I was leading) to try to find the trail because I couldn't find it through the overgrown stuff.

Here are a couple more pictures of our hike!

Okay, don't mind the highly unflattering legs, but I had to take a picture of this. I unwisely decided to wear pants that were capri length, thinking that I was smart because I wouldn't get as hot...but alas, I was wrong. I got scratched up pretty good! I am still trying to heal :P

Overall it was really fun and a good experience! I need to get in better shape, though, if Danny wants me to go on another hike ;)