Camping in the dirt

In mid-August, we were able to fit one final camping trip in before summer was over and everyone would be back to school.  My mom had always wanted to camp up Fairview canyon and so that is what we did.  She and Steve went up a day before us and staked out a spot.  This was our first experience dry-camping and everything went pretty well.  Since we would be hauling the trailer with a full tank of water up a steep canyon, we decided to let the Cummins do the towing.  It did a great job except for starting to overheat near the top of the canyon.  So, it took us a little longer to get there since we had to pull over and wait for the temperature to come back down.

 

 

Camping was fabulous.  We had a nice big camping spot just off the road where the kids were free to explore.  Their favorite thing to do was play in the dirt.  I have never seen my kids get dirtier than they did for those two days of camping.  Micah's hair actually looked brown due to all the dirt that he had in it.  We did have to hose down that boy before Guy would let him ride in the truck.  He had accumulated so much dirt on him that there were rivers of mud running off of him once we added water.

 

Our biggest adventure was when Guy wanted to go for a little drive.  He and I are quite different when it comes to camping.  I am completely content sitting around camp and just relaxing, maybe playing a game or reading a book.  He loves to explore and gets stir crazy if he sits for too long.  So, we went for a little drive.  He had always wanted to take Skyline Drive south to Joe's Valley and then back to Fairview canyon.  I was thinking this would just be a few hours, so we brought Ashley, Elliot and Micah with us and left Amelia back at camp with grandma and grandpa.  It turned into the most awful adventure of all time.  After driving for an hour and a half over dirt roads, we finally reached a big boulder field where the kids got to get out and run around for bit.  I wish that we would have turned around at that point and headed back to camp.  Instead, we kept with the plan and continued south.  The road only got worse from there.  It was more like at ATV trail than something for a full size truck.  We had to go extremely slow and careful over many deep ruts in the road.  We had absolutely no cell service so we couldn't even call to my mom and tell her that we were still alive.  We finally arrived back at camp about 6 hours after we started our adventure.  My mom had the worst thoughts going through her head of raising the orphan Amelia if we never returned.  We were all starving by the time we got back and I was so grateful that my mom had dinner ready for us and then it was off to bed.