Tuesday, May 26, 2009

Memorial Day Camping Trip 2009

These are some of Ricky's pictures of the flash flood that they encountered trying to leave Goblin Valley....this is the result of the hail storm that David and I and Jade got caught in earlier trying to flee the storm....
For Memorial Day Weekend we headed back down to the San Rafael Swell area outside of Green River, UT. We went with our oldest two kids and their families, plus a whole lot of their friends! It was certainly a memorable weekend! We had rain, and more rain, hail, some sun, cold and a whole ton of mud! This is a picture of our camping spot.
You can see how there was mud everywhere with all the rain!

But when the sun would come out, we would head for the jeep, ranger and four wheelers, and go out of some of the amazing trails in the area. The three oldest grandkids, Kenadee, Bailee and Sage road in the jeep with us. We had "Wicked" playing on the IPOD and we had 5 way stereo....the three girls singing at the top of their lungs, and they knew every word of every song!
On Friday while the weather was good, we went over the Devils Racetrack again.....you may remember that we did this same trail 2 weeks earlier and ended up towing Jon's four wheeler out! Well, today was no exception, just shortly after these pictures, we ended up towing this Ranger off the mountain in the pouring rain. We finally just went out on I-70 and towed them down the side of the freeway, because we had 8 freezing kids with us and we were all soaked!


I didn't get any pictures of Devils Racetrack last time, so here is a picture (below) of the hardest part, but of course, the camera does not even begin to do it justice!

Everyone gets out and walks down this part.....it is good that I took pictures this time, because after someone breaking down both times, we probably won't be doing this trail again.



Jake (2) and Hunter and Curtis (5)...above
and Jake and Jade (2) below. It was fun to have
the kids want to ride in the jeep with Grandma and Grandpa!
The jeep is a great place for that afternoon nap! (at least little Jake thought so!) It is amazing how kids can sleep through all the bumpy trails!

Below is the ranger being towed out of Devils Racetrack and up Eva Conover!

On Sunday, there was some sunshine until about 3pm and so we drove over to Goblin Valley State Park for the kids to play on the Goblins and to have a picnic! After all day Sat. cooped up in the trailers because of rain, they really needed the break and to be able to run and play!


Bailee caught a lizard, and named him "Larry" ....she had so much fun with that lizard. She made a little house for him in a water bottle and took him on her hike up the mountain back at camp. She put him on her shirt to climb up a rock, and sadly, Larry jump off and ran away!


Goblin Valley is really an amazing place...

Hunter and Curtis tried surfing on the top of one of the Goblins!



I wanted some new family pictures, so above is David & I

Jon & Amy and their children, Curtis, Kenadee, Bailee and Jake (above)
and, Ricky & Michelle and their children, Hunter, Bailee, Sage and baby Paxton hiding under the blanket!

After our picnic lunch in the Goblin Valley camp ground, the dark clouds started rolling in and David & I decided we had better head back to camp before it started raining again.....we took Jade (2) with us.....rather than out running the storm, we drove straight into it on Temple Mountain. I have never seen hail so fast and so furious. There was three to four inches of hail in less than 15 minutes.....you can see that the jeep only had a top, and I was sitting with Jade in the back seat trying to keep her covered and David finally had to pull over because we couldn't see anything! Thank heavens we had extra coats and jackets in the jeep to throw over us. It was freezing and we were completely covered in hail. You can see the hail piled up on the jeep!


Monday morning there was sun again, and we headed out....this cool arch is just below Swassey's Cabin on the Eagle Canyon trail.

Traveling home on Monday afternoon, Jon's truck blew something just south of Wellington, and we ended up putting 3 kids and Amy over in our truck, and Bailee and I traveled home in the 5th wheel....talk about a bouncy & noisy ride. Bailee thought it was great fun, we played Uno, tic tac toe, rush hour, hangman, and then once it was dark, we made up stories for each other. That will be one of my greatest memories......after getting home about 10pm, David and Ricky headed back to tow Jon's truck and trailer. All in all David was in the truck over 12 hours straight!

3 comments:

M. Drape said...

What a trip! We need to do it again - when it's not so wet :)

Erin Webster said...

Looks like you had a ton of fun! Turns out I'm a little grateful we didn't end up trying to join you in our TENT! Now, that would have been a wet camping experience! haha. Glad you all finally made it home safe!

Shelby said...

Looks like you had a fun time despite the weather!