Roughing it

This weekend I took the kids camping with my family. We camped in the Uinta National Forest. We got there by driving up American Fork Canyon, past Tibble Creek Reservoir, and up a mountain road to a spot near Mill Canyon Peak. It was beautiful and secluded. For Samantha this was her first real camping trip. What I mean by ‘real’ is that there was no motorhome. There was no generator, no running water, no toilet, no DVD player or refrigerator. We were roughing it, and it was my kind of camping.
We left Friday afternoon and arrived at the camp site at about 5:30. Alan and Chas left early Friday morning to get our favorite spot. Unfortunately someone else left earlier, and took our spot. However, they bumped into a Salt Lake County Sheriff who showed them a good spot. After seeing the new spot I wonder what we ever saw in our other campsite. The site was just downstream from a split in the creek, and we had running water on both sides of us. We were also sandwiched between two sheer canyon walls, and protected from a lot of wind. The site was far enough from the trail that we couldn’t hear the sounds of the few vehicles and many four-wheelers that passed by.

The trail from Tibble Fork to our campsite was one of the highlights of the trip for me, and it made me want to register my Jeep just for an excursion like this. The trail is rutted out, and you need to constantly move left and right to straddle the many rocks strewn about the trail. My kids thought the bouncing around was cool. As we got to the campsite Alan was pulling out to go back to the Reservoir to pick up his wife and their youngest daughter. Alley had to work late, and met Alan at Tibble so that they wouldn’t have to drive her car up the rough trail. My Dad and my other sister Beckie and her husband had followed Alley up.

As I waited for the rest of the group to get to the campsite, I set up the tent and made the fire. It got to be 7:00 and I hadn’t seen them return, so I threw our tinfoil dinners in the coals. My kids are used to eating at about 5, and were hungry. No sooner had I thrown the dinners in, than my Dad arrived in the campsite, sans Alan. Chas informed me that Alan’s Durango had suffered a flat, and his spare too was flat. I asked my sister to feed my kids when their dinners were ready, and headed back down the trail on a rescue mission. Since I have a Durango, I knew that my spare would fit on Alan’s rig. We got his (my) tire on and bounced back up the trail. It was nearly 9:00 by this time, and I found that my kids loaded up on Alley’s hot dogs and ignored their tinfoil dinners. Now I pride myself on my excellent tinfoil dinners, and wasn’t about to let them go to waste, so I ate three of the four myself, with my sister Kat finishing off the last.
After dinner I made my signature dessert: raspberry bread pudding in the Dutch oven. I burned it, of course, because I always burn it when cooking over the fire rather than briquettes. It was delicious none the less. My dad also made a pineapple upside-down cake in his Dutch oven, and we also ate S-mores. In typical Shirley fashion, we spent the entire camp trip stuffing ourselves silly.

Whitney retired earlier than anyone else, and thankfully took Samantha with her. We had been in camp only five minutes that night when S’manth freaked out about the flies. She is terrified to the point of panic over bugs. Patrick stayed up late, mostly playing by himself or staring at the fire. For some reason campfires hold the imaginations of boys better than anything else, except girls. Another thing I noticed about Patrick: He and James (Alan’s nephew) were the only two little boys on this trip. The whole time they entertained themselves, playing alone. The girls on the other hand, (Whitney, Samantha, Hannah, Chloe and Kaylee) kept together in one group all the time.

Anyway, we got rained on hard during the night, but it only lasted for a few minutes. It came in quick, hit hard, and then just as fast was gone. But the tent kept us nice and dry.
Saturday morning my Dad cooked bacon, eggs and hash browns on the grill, and again we stuffed ourselves. After breakfast we broke camp and had lunch. We then bounced back down the trail and on down the canyon to the Timpanogos Cave Trail. I’ve hiked up to the cave several times, but this was the first time we’ve had to make an appointment. There are too many people who want to go, so they now require scheduled times to stagger the traffic in the cave. We checked in at 2:00 and were told we had until 3:30 to make the 1 ½ mile trek to the mouth of the cave. This may seem like a lot of time until you consider that 1) We had little kids with us, and 2) The elevation ascend 1,100 feet in that mile and a half.
I carried Samantha on my shoulders most of the way up and all the way back down. Patrick and Whitney both walked, but Patrick brought up the rear. The cave is absolutely amazing. It was discovered in the late 1800s by a couple of young men who were tracking an animal. I wonder what kind of animal they were hunting on such a sheer cliff and what they intended to do when they felled the animal. Anyway, the caves are filled with stalactites and stalagmites. The cave has water dripping through all year round. It was about 40 degrees in the cave, in comparison to the near 90s we faced on the hike up. I’ve included a bunch of pictures from the cave, but my flash wasn’t working, so most of them didn’t work.
After the caves we had to hurry home, because my Dad and brother had tickets to see Real Madrid play Real Salt Lake in a soccer match. I am glad we were able to make this trip. Chas is leaving for BYU Hawaii next week. This was the first camping trip where my father (Grandpa Stretch, Patriarch of the Salt Lake Shirley clan) and all of his kids were able to camp together. Only my wife, Kate who had to work, and my youngest, Bean were unable to make the trip. I was also glad to take my kids on a real camping trip. I think they got a lot out of it.

Bean

This coming week we will be celebrating Lauren’s first birthday. It is hard to believe that it has been a year since she was born. It is even more amazing to think about how rough she had it when she was born, and how far she’s come. I have heard that babies that are premature and have complications often times see the effects of those complications for many years. But in Bean’s case you would never know by looking at her that she had any struggles.
When she was born she was just a tiny little thing, and it makes me laugh every time I see the fat rolls on her thighs. It is a sobering thought to think that we were very close to losing her, and that if Kate hadn’t been a nurse and recognized the signs of distress things would have gone bad for Bean.

(Here is a picture of Lauren in comparison to her cousin Maren, who is less than a month older.)

When Lauren was born her hands and feet were purple, and it was feared that she wasn’t pushing blood all the way to her extremities. She had to spend time in the newborn ICU, and the hospital staff only let us take her home because Kate was a staff member. When she was only a week old Lauren had to have surgery on a closed tear duct, but in the process of that it was discovered that she had a cyst in her nose and wasn’t able to breathe when eating. So the cyst was excised at the same time.

Again we thought we were in the clear, but then she stopped eating altogether, and before we knew it she was back in the hospital with a feeding tube. But Bean is a determined girl, just like her mother, and finally decided that she liked eating on her own. Now getting her to eat is no problem. She’s eating us out of house and home, and that is just fine with us.
I am so grateful that Kate had the skills that she does, and was observant. Take a look at the before and after pictures of Bean with the teddy bear. Quite a stark contrast.

P.S. if you’re wondering where the name ‘Bean’ came from, here’s the story. When Lauren was in the hospital with her feeding tube, I was talking to her and said, “You look like a little baby bean.” Because she looked like a little kidney bean with arms and legs. Whitney overheard me, and the nickname Bean stuck. So when Kate sent out birthday party announcements she used the tag line, “Can you believe it’s ‘Bean’ a year?” All four of our kids have their own nickname. But don’t ask where Patrick’s (Mr. P) came from…