Camping with Gramps

If how long your three-year-old prays expressing gratitude for a recent camping trip and asking to do it again indicates how successful your camping trip was, then our recent camping trip with Gramps was a huge success!  Ty continues to talk about it in every prayer every day.

 We spent our UEA break camping with Gramps in Canyonlands National Park and having a wonderful time.  Actually, to be honest, we only camped in Canyonlands for about 45 minutes because immediately after we got our camp all set up we realized that the campsite-- the last empty one in the campground-- was already taken.  Oops.  But after the warm-up at campsite 1, our set-up time at campsite 2 (just outside the park on BLM land) had to be some kind of record.

 We had a fantastic time all around!  The boys loved climbing the rocks, chasing lizards, and throwing balls around the campground.  Gramps was the perfect tour guide, enthralling us all with stories from southern Utah history. (Benjamin once stated in awe, "Wow.  Gramps has infinite stories!")

 

 

  We went on some really fun little hikes as well as a killer 10 mile hike through sand to see Paul Bunyan's Potty and some cool Indian ruins.  The boys enjoyed finding animal tracks which Gramps collected for "deer track soup".

 Ty and Benjamin became junior rangers, and Ty took his duties very seriously-- pointing out every cactus plant on the trail and telling us gravely every time, "Watch out! Be careful! Doooooooon't touch it!"

 After enjoying two days and nights of sleeping in tents, eating tinfoil dinners, chili, and s'mores, hearing Gramps' crazy stories, hiking and enjoying the natural beauty of Canyonlands, it was time to go home.  On the way, Gramps took us to see the dinosaur footprints just outside of Moab.  Ty got very excited and said, "Okay, let's follow them!  Let's go find them!"  Despite our best efforts, he refused to believe that dinosaurs are extinct when there was such undeniable proof of their existence right in front of his eyes.  He kept begging to go find the dinosaurs and cried when we dragged him back to Gramps' truck and for a good while afterwards. 

Thank you to Gramps for going with us and making our trip more fun and an even bigger thank you to Grandma for watching Jacob so that we could do it!  It was a wonderful trip!