YEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHH!!! We were finally able to go camping! After not being able to go at all last year and our Memorial Day reservations being cancelled this year due to too much snow, we were FINALLY able to make it up the hill.
We found a pretty awesome campground up Highway 50, almost to Kyburz, on the Icehouse Reservoir. It's a federal campground that is taken care of by campground hosts and they do an awesome job of that. All the sites are manicured, as well as you can manicure a FOREST, and the bathrooms are very clean. There aren't any showers at this particular campground so there is the potential to get a little funky. We jumped in the water though so we were able to rinse off a bit.
The last time that we'd camped here, we scoped out other sites so we knew where we'd want to stay the next time. Josh found this site and loved the privacy of it. So did the bears...but more on that later. The first picture was taken standing right behind the picnic table, looking down toward the truck. Yes, we had to hike in all of our gear up and down that hill... The second picture was taken looking up from right near the truck. So you can see just how private we were.
Some other pictures from right around our site
Abbi and Hayden had been camping before so we knew how they'd do but we weren't sure about little Legion. He definitely wasn't as confident and a little uneasy but he had a blast too.
The first night was uneventful. We just set up our site, roasted some wieners over the fire, and finished it all off with some s'mores.
This is what I woke up to the next morning! Josh was our chef for the trip and this was the breakfast that he made for us.
This day brought walks and swimming!!! A bike path runs through a handful of campgrounds so we just take the dogs along that path to the reservoir. We found a new spot this year with a little sandy beach so it was much nicer to take the dogs swimming and allowed us to get in the water as well.
My little Hayden Bug relaxing. He's such a good boy. He was the only one that was able to be off-leash for the majority of the trip. He really is the best dog...
Even though there were mostly well-equipped bathrooms, I didn't want to take any chances.
After one of my bathroom trips, I came back to wash my hands from our water jug. This *little* guy was waiting for me. Josh and I were both surprised that I didn't jump back and start squealing. Anybody that knows what kind of bug this is, please let us know!! The Dorito is there to show how big the thing was.
Hayden, come play with me!!
The only time I can get pictures of Abbi is when I catch her completely off-guard. This was taken between the arm and seat of my chair. Lookit her sweet sweet eyes.
Oh, so sad because it was one of the few times he was leashed up.
Legion found a stick!!
Yes, that's a fallen TREE that he's carrying around.
Josh's trolley system that he set up. The dogs kept getting tangled up in each other's leashes when we had them all hooked to one. So he strung up two ropes, in addition to the trolley cable that we had, and attached leashes to all three. While it pretty much eliminated the tangling of the dogs, they were getting themselves all sorts of wrapped up around the trees, the bbq, and constantly knocking over their water bucket. Sigh...
Josh's new tent!! He got this as a gift for his birthday last year but we weren't able to use it then. This camping trip was its debut. We didn't put the fly on the first night because it has some nice openings on the top and I wanted to *sleep under the stars*. It was much colder the second night so we ended up putting on the fly the next day.
You may wonder why we need such a big tent for just the two of us. Well, we were thinking, no, hoping, that we'd be able to sleep next to each other on one side and have the dogs sleep where they wanted to on the other. What ended up happening that first night was that all of the dogs wanted to sleep either in between us or IN the sleeping bags. Great. Legion was ADAMANT that he sleep next to me. Something that never happens. We just attributed it to the fact that he wasn't confident in his surroundings and wanted to be comforted. And I was loving the fact that he was cuddling. Again, something that never happens. Josh ended up almost getting pushed out of his own sleeping bag by Hayden: he'd let him in his bag and Hayden straight-legged stretched in the middle of the night.
So now we've got this big tent that we're calling Nute Manor 2.0. I can't quite do cartwheels in this one. Somersaults, maybe. But I really like that we can both fully stand up in it and have plenty of room.
Still not gonna look at the camera.
On the way to the water! They were very excited and trotting on the way there. Not so much on they way back. They were moving much, much slower.
This is about as much as he'll get in the water.
Just add some blond hair and braids and she could double as Bo Derek running down the beach!
Josh threw out a duck trainer for Legion to see how he'd respond. To say that he loved it would be an extreme understatement!
Enlarge the picture and you can see little Abbi's head pretty far out in the water.
Josh, 'queing some of his famous tri tip and yummy corn.
Tired swimming baby...
This is symbolic of the previous night's events...
Around midnight the night before, I woke up having to potty. I'd asked Josh to hand me the head-lamp so I didn't have to fumble with a flashlight in the bathroom. Knowing me, it would've ended up in the toilet... Just as he was about to hand it off, we hear "bear, Bear, BEAR!! GET OUT OF HERE!" Crap. In ALL OF THE YEEEEAAAARS that I've been camping, I've NEVER had to deal with a bear. That I know of. And thank you mom and dad for keeping it a secret if we have. Josh tells me to grab the dogs because he was going to check it out. In his chones. He didn't want the dogs busting out of the tent so I grabbed onto them probably the tightest that I ever have. So he's talking to me, telling me how cold he is, something about freezing something off. I never heard what it was because in mid-sentence, he starts yelling AT THE BEAR to get out of there. IT WAS IN OUR CAMPSITE!!! Again, crap. He was yelling at the bear, she stood on her back legs, he yelled again, she didn't move, so Josh fired a round into the air to scare her. And it did. He told me to quickly come out and potty on a tree, and I think that was the fastest that I've ever gone before. My heart was pounding and I was actually shaking because I was so scared. Evidently, they're *just* black bears, *only* weighing about 400 pounds. They're only there for food and not going to hurt me. Um, ok Mr. Alaska. To me, it's a bear. And bears can take off a person's scalp with one swipe of the paw. Our site happened to be in the perfect location for bear traffic though: smack between the garbage bin, a creek, and the ridge that they live over.
I learned this night that our dogs are quite heavy sleepers too. They didn't give us even the slightest notice that there was something going on outside of the tent. At least, not this night...
We took them back down to the water the next day and spent more time in the water with them. Before we left though, we saw another one of the crazy bugs!! What ARE these?!?!?
Hayden, doing what he loves to do.
LEGION SWIMMING!!!
It's still not perfect and still quite splash-y but it's so much better than what he was doing before. Maybe there really is something in the water that magically gives dogs the courage to swim because this is the same place that Abbi finally got the guts to learn to swim too. And now we can't keep her out of the water...
They all played so hard!
Thank you gramma, grampa, big gramma, and aunt nan for a bigger place for us to sleep!
The last night that we were there, while we were roasting our s'mores, I heard noises from down by the creek. Bear noises. Like the grunting they do when they're scratching or rolling around. I'm just going by what I've seen on tv though... Josh tells me that I'm being paranoid and pretty much that I'm hearing things. Nope! Because not 10 minutes later, Legion shoots up, runs to the end of his trolley, and starts barking. We hear the thudding and rustling of something large (I'm guessing a BEAR!) running away. Suddenly I'm not so eager to roast my 'mallow anymore... This puts me on HYPER alert and I'm shining the flashlight on any noise that I hear. Which, when you're cued in to every sound, is a LOT! I hear more rustling not too far off in the distance from our campsite and Josh takes Abbi to investigate. I'm sure he's still thinking that I'm hearing things... He ends up seeing a pair of eyes shining back at him. TOLD YA!! He watched it for a bit and it was too small and too fast to be a bear so WHEW, at least they've gone for the night. SO I THOUGHT.
Josh had built up the fire to a pretty good size to deter the bears before we went to bed. Then, in one of those half asleep, half awake moments, I see the fire go dark and then come back. Huh, okay, I'll just go back to sleep then. Josh tells me the next morning that a BIGGER bear was walking thru our campsite. Nice. Evidently, there is a
family of bears living in the area. Which is strange because after mating, the male bear typically takes off. This daddy bear is sticking around and from what the camp host told us, there is a study being done on them to try to find out why. Pretty neat. The host also said that several campsites away, they'd left quite a bit of meat out in their coolers and food on the table and the bears just feasted on all of it so they were going around, scavenging for more. Dummies. The people, not the bears.
On the last day, after we'd packed up, we took the dogs down to the water for one last swim.
Other campers had dragged a log from the beach into the water. Abbi wasn't too thrilled about being placed on it.
Throw the stick, mom, throw the stick!!
I was able to get this picture by asking her if she wanted a cookie. And then I felt like a jerk because I didn't have one to give her...
Huuuuuuuunnnnnnnnhhhh...
I'm up!
Dang, no I'm not!
He got the hang of it though.
We left the campsite with only this:
And came back with this.... It's actually much uglier in person than in the picture:
Josh is off again for work but we really cherish the times that he's home and we're able to take a few days together to get away from everything. Cell phones off. No tv. No computer. It was really nice and we can't wait to get back!!
