I Love Camping!!

My siblings are somewhat spread out, so every year, we try to have a reunion, and each year we rotate who is in charge. And yes this year was my turn. I have one brother with three kids in Witchita, a sister with one kid in Denver, a sister in California, then myself, my little brother, my older sister and parents are all here in Utah.

This year we wanted to do something a little bit different, so we decided (I actually think it was Stacie's idea) to go camping in Colorado. We looked around and got input from Stacie's brother who lives there and he suggested Estes Park.

When we went to leave, we try to start up the DVD player for the kids, and the fuse blew. We stopped by Ace hardware, grabbed some more fuses, and blew a couple more. We decided to try the impossible and ride 7 hours in the car with two kids and no DVD player. As it turned out, the kids were actually pretty good. (Thank you!, Thank you!) When we got to Colorado, my brother-in-law (who is an electrical engineer) looked at the adapter for the DVD player, took it apart, then put it together, and what do you know, it worked! I also ended up locking my keys in the car. The Locksmith wanted $155 to get the keys out. When I said no way, he still wanted me to pay him $45 for coming over. Shortly after I refused and walked in the house, he came to the door and said he would do it for $70 cash. Amber if only you would have answered your phone I would have waited for Mike to talk me through it.

The next day we drove up to our campsite at Great Basin in Estes Park. It was beautiful. I couldn't remember what time the rest of my family was going to show up, so after we had lunch and waited for a while, we decided to go on a short hike around Bear Lake. That was pretty cool too. When we got back, my family was there and of course they got there right after we left. We made camp and settled down for the night.

The next day, we got ready and went for a hike to Alberta Falls. That hike was cool too. After lunch we drove up Highway 36, the highest highway in the US, it might even be the world. We saw a bunch of Elk up there and the climate is very unique because it's 12000 feet about sea level.

On Sunday, we went for a hike around a small lake that wasn't too far from our camp, and then some of us decided to take a nap. The rest went and played a game called jump and did some jump rope. I even did double dutch for a few seconds. On Monday morning, we left early so Stacie could come home and work and yes the DVD player worked. Oh what fun! It was an awesome weekend. Both of the kids loved it!