My VERY best, MOST favorite day this summer was spent at the beginning of August at Stanley Lake. And I just couldn't take enough photographs as evidence of my pure joy that day...there's an impressive 65 pictures on this blog post, and I had a hard time even paring it down to that!!
We went camping with Ryan (Josh's best friend) and Heidi (Josh's cousin) and their daughter Ayla. We've never camped with them before, but I think this (hopefully) just started an annual tradition! They live in Meridian, and we live in Salmon, so we met them half-way in Stanley. The campgrounds around Stanley Lake were full, so we dry-camped about a mile down the road from the lake's access. Ryan & Heidi arrived there on Sunday, August 2, and we arrived on Monday, August 3. On Sunday, I was returning to Salmon after visiting my friend Krissy in Meridian that weekend, and I stopped at Stanley Lake on the way to see if I could find Ryan & Heidi anywhere, and miraculously, as I was just leaving, they came driving down the road. So I followed them around until we found a suitable campsite for both of our trailers. I was glad I had an idea of where we would be, because it made it easier than searching all over for them in a truck and trailer, and also I brought extra supplies (picnic table, folding table, stand-up griddle) since I knew we weren't going to be at a supplied campground.
On the way there, we encountered some road construction, and had to stop for about 20 minutes. We were the first car in line (we barely missed the cut-off, and could see the cars from our lane up ahead, but the flagger wouldn't let us through, and we only missed it because a construction worker pulled out in front of us about 500 yards before the stop and drove 20mph, grrrr). The flagger lady was nice enough to give the boys some peanuts, which they lured some local squirrels and chipmunks with while we waited, though!
When we arrived at our campsite, we set up the trailer and unloaded the truck. Ryan and Heidi weren't around, so we went down to the lake to look for them.
We couldn't find them, so we went back to the camp site, ate lunch, and sat around relaxing until they returned. Apparently they had been out on the lake in their inflatable boat, and some strong winds came up and blew them to the other side of the lake, and it took them a long time to get back to the side of the lake where their truck was parked!
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| (photo courtesy of Heidi!) |
After they got back, the boys and I played a long card game of Phase 10 (we only play that when we go camping), and Josh, Ryan, and Heidi relaxed and chatted. They let Josh try out their new camping chair, too, which he liked because it was just the right size for his long body (but I couldn't get it to recline very well since I'm so short!).
Later that afternoon, Josh and Ryan went target shooting; they drove way back into another dry camping area not too far from us where no one was. While they were gone, Heidi taught the boys how to play bocce ball, and Ayla played with board games in our trailer.
We took turns with the Stephensons making dinner. They were in charge of Monday night's meal. It was nice not having to do every meal (thanks Ryan & Heidi)! While they worked on preparing for it, we just hung out around the campsite.
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| Kanyon playing catch with Josh |
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| Jonah and Micah splitting wood |
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| Ryan is a talented chef & made a double dessert in the dutch oven: apple cobbler on the left and cherry cobbler on the right! |
Our Forsgren cousins live in Stanley, so each night for dinner, Weaton and Clerissa and their daughter Kendilyn drove up and joined us, too. It was so fun! After dinner, we played games and when it started getting dark, they left to go home, and we went to bed in our trailers.
During the night, a rainstorm blew through, clearing out some of the smoke that had resided above us. When we woke up on Tuesday morning, there were clear blue skies. It was the perfect day to spend at the beach on Stanley Lake! Josh and Ryan drove in to Stanley to the Forsgren's house first and picked up a stand-up paddleboard and some inflatable tubes, and then we all headed for the lake! This was the day I was talking about earlier: Best. Day. EVER!!!
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| I love getting sand in my toes! |
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| My handsome man with the beautiful Sawtooth Mountain range in the distance! |
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| Josh & Ryan: best friends since high school! |
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| Jonah |
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| Micah |
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| Kanyon |
The boys have never really tubed on a lake before: only in our ditch. It was different for them, and took some getting used to. Kanyon couldn't figure out how to get back to the beach after the current took him away, so Ryan went out in his boat and brought him back within a reasonable distance, and then I went out in a tube and retrieved him from there!
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| He held onto my feet as I paddled back. Thanks Heidi for the pic! |
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| I think this picture is HOT. Jus' sayin! |
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| Micah standing |
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| Micah kneeling |
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| Jonah standing |
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| Jonah kneeling |
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| Trying it together! I love this picture of them! |
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| If it weren't for Heidi, I wouldn't have a single picture of me! I'm so glad that I have a picture of me from my favorite day this summer! |
In between the tubing and paddleboarding, the boys played in the sand on the beach. It was heavenly to sit around and relax and watch them have so much fun the whole day!
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| We didn't really come prepared to go camping with sand toys, so we grabbed anything from the trailer that would work on the beach, including this funnel!!! |
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| Jonah and Micah both loved burying each other, as well as being buried!! |
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| Look how nicely level Micah made the sand over Jonah's body! That's totally something I would do, and seeing those leveled lines made me smile! |
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| Jonah is making a sand pillow to lift up Micah's head, how thoughtful! When I came over to snap a photo of this, Micah wasn't wearing his glasses, and Jonah yelled at me, "NO! You won't know it's Micah unless he's wearing his glasses!", so I had to grab his glasses off the beach chair first! I thought that was so funny! |
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| They each had to try and get out of their sand pit without their brother's assistance. I thought Micah looked like a Frankenstein being born here! |
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| Kanyon deepening the trench by the creek that flows into the lake. |
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| Jonah and Micah built this tunnel. They were so proud when it was done! They kept bringing buckets of water to pour in the one side so they could watch it flow from the other end! |
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| Kanyon's turn to be buried! Ayla even helped bury with sand, too! |
Josh and Ryan went back to the campsite to retrieve lunch for us. We didn't want to leave the beach; we were having so much fun, but we were all getting hungry! That was so thoughtful of them! After lunch, Kanyon decided he wanted to try the paddleboard. It ended the same as the tube ride that morning, though!
He just kept getting further and further away from us! So this time, Josh went out in the boat to rescue him!
When they returned, Kanyon kept saying "The oar just wouldn't work right! Something was wrong with the oar!". We were all laughing so hard watching Josh go after Kanyon, because the harder Josh rowed, the further away Kanyon was getting! Kanyon kept paddling WITH the current instead of against it, and since he's so light, he was traveling away much faster than Josh could catch up to him! And since Josh can't yell (due to his paralyzed vocal cords), Kanyon couldn't hear him when he tried to tell him to stop paddling! I'm glad Kanyon tried it out, but he didn't have as much fun as the rest of us did on that paddleboard!
The family that was by us on the beach was really nice, and they had a little girl who played with Ayla and the boys all day. She showed the boys a frog she caught, and Kanyon helped her return it back to the creek.
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| Kanyon made the "perfect" sand castle pillar! |
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| Ayla playing in the shallow water. She was the safety patrol and kept telling everyone, "Don't go too deep! The water is deep!" |
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| Micah found another great use for that funnel! |
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| Family Boat Ride! |
Josh and Ryan each took the paddleboard separately to go to the side of the lake that was nearest the mountains. There was a little inlet bay there. We liked watching them go all the way over there, until they were out of sight!
By late afternoon, we were doing a lot of sitting! The beach was so fun, but tiring too!
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| The boys floating on the creek into the lake |
And pretty soon, there was a lot of this going on:
Josh and I headed back to the campsite that evening to get dinner ready. We cooked steak, dutch oven potatoes, and french bread. It was our first time making potatoes in the dutch oven, which stressed Josh out for a bit, but it all turned out good. Weaton and Clerissa played games with us after dinner again, this time we played a rousing round of "Things". We laughed SO hard at some of the responses; we always have so much fun playing that game with our kids!
Our dessert for the night was banana boats. We grilled them, and also cooked smores over the campfire that Josh built for us. We sat around the campfire until it was past dark, then we said goodbye to Weaton and Clerissa (since it was our last night camping), and went to bed.
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| The sunset was just breathtaking! |
The next morning, we cooked sausages and toaster strudels and waffle toast over the campfire for breakfast, then slowly packed up and headed home to Salmon.
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| This photo makes me want to say "wax on, wax off..."! |
1 comment:
When I was a teenager my family started going up to Stanley Lake every year in the summer. Many fond memories of that time, and it was always so fun! Makes me want to go back. :)
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