Capital Reef Camping Trip

This past weekend, September 27-September 28, our little family along with the Hess family, Furr family, and mom and dad went camping in Torrey, Utah.  A camping trip was originally planned, by the Hess family,  to go to Payson Lakes.  Case and I decided it would be too cold to take Mason camping so we were just going to go up for breakfast on Saturday morning.  Plans changed when we found out it had snowed in Payson Lakes.  Because of the horrible weather, a new location was picked further South so it would be warmer (at least we thought it would be warmer).  We decided to stay at a campground called Thousand Lakes Park, it was a beautiful camp ground full of a playground, a huge grassy area to play on, a little gift shop, a swimming pool, etc.  Casey and I, along with my mom and dad decided to rent a little cabin for the night so we would have a warm spot to stay if it got cold.

I went to pick up Casey from work around 2:00 so we could just leave right from Springville.  We arrived at Thousand Lakes campground around 5:30.  The Hess family, Furr family, and mom and dad had already arrived and set up their camp sites.  When Case and I got there we checked into our little cabin, unloaded our things into our cabin, then went to join the others who were playing on the playground and grassy field.

What we thought would be a nice 65-70 degree camping trip, turned into be a very cold, but still fun 45 degree camping trip.  When I hopped out of the car I was shocked to how cold it was.  The weather was only to get colder the later it got, luckily thanks to Amy who had prepared us, we came prepared with winter coats and blankets.

We played on the playground and watched the boys play frisbee for awhile, then decided it was time to start cooking dinner.  The wind was blowing so hard so we decided to set up the stove under the tiny awning attached to the small cabin, surprisingly the awning gave off a lot of protection from the wind.  When dinner was ready we all huddled together into Mom and Dad's small cabin to eat.  We ate a delicious dinner of spaghetti, French bread, and a green salad.

After dinner, a few of the boys went outside the cabin to build a fire.  Once dinner was cleaned up, we all went outside to sit by the fire.

 Friday night happened to be Jared's birthday.  Jared had made a delicious dutch oven peach cobbler and Ry and Meg had brought a yummy pumpkin pie, with the 2 desserts we stuck a few candles in each and sang Happy Birthday to Jared.

Typical Jared pose

After Jared's birthday was celebrated, we called it a night.  By this time most of the kids had fallen asleep by the warm fire and Mason was so bundled up in 2 coats, 2 blankets, mittens, and snuggling up to dad that he had even almost fallen asleep.

Casey and I went in our cabin to get Mason ready for bed, we washed him down, put on his jammies, fed him is bottle, read him stores, and sang him songs then tried to lay him down in his pack-n-play.  As soon as we laid him down he started screaming.  We laid Mason in our bed and I sang songs to him until he fell asleep.  Once he was asleep I put him pack in his pack-n-play where he slept through the whole night!!

The next morning was just, if not, colder then the night before.  The wind was blowing so hard!  Once we all got ready for the day we went over to Mom and Dad's cabin again to get breakfast ready.  We had a yummy breakfast of muffins, bagels, sausage, donuts, bacon, chocolate milk, and hot chocolate.  By about 9:30 in the morning the weather finally started to heat up and the wind stopped blowing.

After eating breakfast we packed up our things and headed out to Capital Reef.  We had so much fun spending the day in Capital Reef.  We started by going to the Capital Reef visitor's center.  Around the visitor's center there are a lot of fun sights to see.  Our first stop was an old pioneer house.  At the end of the pioneer house they had a fresh bakery and homemade ice cream.  Mason loved every bite of the homemade ice cream. 

After the pioneer house it was onto the pioneer farm.  The pioneers had planted fruit trees in such random places.  You would be driving and see a field of a few dozen fruit trees.  You are able to go and pick all the fruit you want.  Growing up on a fruit farm, you'd think we would of had our fill of picking fruit, but we ended up spending about an hour picking apples from the trees.  This ended up being Casey's favorite part of the trip!  While we were picking apples a few deer crossed through the orchard right in front of us. 

On our way back to the car we stopped by a small river so the kids and the boys could throw a few rocks in.  We also stopped by this old truck for a picture opp. 

Since the trails were not really stroller friendly this is how I often found my 2 boys...

After visiting the sights around the visitor's center we drove further into Capital Reef for a small hike.  We decided to do the Grand Wash hike.  Again the trail wasn't really stroller friendly so we had to carry Mason during the hike. 

The hike was supposed to lead to this really narrow spot.  We hiked about a mile in before Mason started screaming.  Case, Mason and I along with Mom, Dad, Amy, Ashley, and Landon decided to turn around while Jared, Ry, Parks, and Lydia hiked a little further (Meg and Mabel had stayed in the car because Mabel had fallen asleep).  When they got out they said the narrow part was just around the corner from where we turned around. :(  I wish we could have seen it, but Mason had definitely had enough and was ready to start our hike out. 

After Case and I got back to our car we decided to go visit the old Fruita Schoolhouse while we waited for the others to return.  I forgot to take pictures of the schoolhouse, but it was a tiny one room schoolhouse with only about 11 desks inside.  Being a teacher myself, I was amazed at how little supplies the teacher was given to teach between 10-25 kids all day.  If you pressed a button a recording came on of the old teacher that used to teach in this schoolhouse.  She definitely went through a lot for only $57/month including the students being so mean to her they put a dead snake on her chair!  This experience made me so grateful for our school system we have now!

After visiting the schoolhouse we met up with the rest of the family.  By this time it was about 4:00 and we were all starving.  We decided to head back towards Torrey to eat at a small hamburger joint called Slacker's.

 After eating at Slacker's and enjoying a yummy shake, we started our 3 hour drive home.  It sure didn't take Mason long to fall asleep, poor guy was so worn out! 

We had so much fun on our little camping trip to Capital Reef!  Thanks Amy and Jared for planning such a fun trip, we hope to make a trip like this an annual tradition!