At the beginning of June, I went to Utah with the boys for my niece's baptism. While there, I attended church on Sunday with my parents. That Sunday was testimony meeting, and I had the impression to share my testimony with the congregation. I had no intention of doing so, and I had no idea what I was going to say. I was the last speaker to get up before the meeting ended. I spoke about how I live in Salmon now and teach music at the elementary school. I told how I love to come home to my parent's ward and see ward members that I knew growing up serving in different capacities now, and how change is good and how wonderful the organization of the church is. I talked about the atonement of Jesus Christ, and how it applies and works for all of us, no matter what stage we are in life and my appreciation and love for my Savior for this gift he's given all of us. A week later, I received a phone call from a woman in my parent's ward that I'd never met. She told me her daughter was moving to Salmon the coming week to work full-time at the grocery store for the summer. The woman told me how she works as a cook at a scout camp near Salmon during the summer time as well, and happened to find a job for her daughter with the local grocery store as she was placing a food order with them. She said her daughter needed a place to stay, and when I bore my testimony at church and mentioned that I was from Salmon, she thought perhaps it was an answer to her prayers. I told her that I would ask around at church and see if anyone was interested, but if nothing else came up, I said that her daughter could live in our camp trailer for the summer. The woman also knew some other people in Salmon who said they would ask at their church, too. 3 days before her daugher was scheduled to work, she still had not received any offers for her daughter to stay with anyone, so she called me back and asked if it would be okay if her daughter lived in our trailer. I agreed to it, and said she could live there for the next two months. When her daughter came up, she said that she would be working until the middle of August. I told her we had a camping trip planned for the middle of August, and that she could stay here until then. And she did. I found another family in the ward that she could stay with the final week of her employment here because we needed to use the trailer for our scheduled camping trip. We usually go camping multiple times each summer, and it was difficult for me throughout the summer knowing that we couldn't until August. So when we were finaly able to go, we stayed longer to help make up the difference.
On Friday, August 10, we went to the ward campout north of Gibbonsville at Twin Creeks Campground. We had such a great time! It was the first time our ward has done this, and I hope they do it again! We ate dinner, played team olympic games, and told stories around the campfire. The next morning, we ate breakfast and the boys played with their friends until it was time to pack up and go.
On Saturday, we drove the trailer up the pass and over into Montana. We headed for Reservoir Lake, a spot we'd never been to before. The drive took a few hours, and we stopped at the Ghost Town of Bannock as a welcome break to get out of the car and walk around. It was such a beautiful day, and a peaceful stop. We looked through the old buildings and read historical information. I truly enjoyed it!
We arrived at Reservoir Lake that evening and set up camp. That night we went fishing, ate dinner, roasted marshmallows & starbursts. On Sunday, we floated the lake and went fishing again that morning. In the afternoon, we took 4-wheeler rides. Throughout the day, the boys rode bikes, we played card games and read books, ate junk food, and relaxed. And I loved every minute of it. It was beautiful weather and a lot of people left the campground on Sunday morning, so it was very quiet and serene.
Ammon worked on making an outdoor bed the whole time we were there. He cut dead branches from nearby trees with a hatchet, and hacked off the limbs from them, and formed a makeshift perimeter around the bed. He leveled the ground and removed all the debris from inside the perimeter, then placed pine boughs as bedding. Then he put down a pad and sleeping bag, and put an umbrella on ropes that were strung between the trees that were next to the bed. He actually slept in it on Sunday night. The other boys wanted to sleep outside, too, so they helped pitch a tent and they put all their sleeping bags in it. It was the first time that we've gone camping that Josh & I had the trailer to ourselves for the night!
(Ammon asleep in his sleeping bag and makeshift outdoor bed on Monday morning)
(Josh checking in on the boys on Monday morning...
...they were all wrapped up warmly inside their sleeping bags!)
On Monday morning, we floated the lake one more time and fished again, but we never caught a single fish while we were there. Then we packed up camp and headed home. The drive was a couple hours' long again, and when we drove over the mountain and into the Lemhi Valley, it was filled with such extreme smoke from the local forest fires, that I just wanted to go back to our mini-vacation camping spot! It was the best camping trip we'd had for a long time! It was definitely worth the wait!
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