strawberry reservoir

Last weekend in July/ first weekend in August we went camping up Strawberry Reservoir. It really surprised me with how close that Strawberry is. Only about a 40 minute drive!

Here is Jesse about 24 hours in to camping, he was starting to get a little dirty.
Each child has their own chair, Jesse even has one that is low to the ground, but every time that he went to climb in a chair to sit down, he would get in the froggy chair, Kacen's chair!

We went for a couple of walks, to enjoying the outdoors, get exercise and have fun! Abbi really loved pushing Jesse along the gravel road in the little stroller.

We went down by the water twice. The first time we went to the day use area that they had. It wasn't a very useful place, it looked like there was green moss every where in the water, there was stinging nettle all along the path to get to the water, dead little crawdad bodies and sinking gushy mud, eww!
After I went on a walk with Alona and Kacen, I found a better place to go down to the water. No green stuff in the water, less sticky mud and practically no stinging nettle and instead of dead little crawdad bodies, Paul was able to catch a real crawdad when we all went down there together. Paul, Abbi and I even waded in the water and had fun!

Kacen's time was spent fighting off the weeds and trees! Jesse even tried to join in
with him a few times.

tents are great big awesome play pens!

And OF Course, the Traditional SMORES!!

Second morning, Jesse waking up daddy!

One of our friendly little visitors
We headed home on Sunday morning, but instead of heading home I thought that it would be a great experience to go to see Dinosaur National Monument. I knew it was close to Vernal, which seemed like it took FOREVER to get to. We came to Vernal and then we passed Vernal and we kept getting further and further away, and still didn't see any signs for Dinosaur National Monument. We only happened across a sign for Dinosaur, Colordao. So guess where we ended up for lunch that day at 1 pm after a 3 hour drive, yep Dinosaur Colorado! Which of course after we talked to the people at the visitor center, come to find out the turn off for Dinosaur National Monument was 30 miles back the way we came, back in UTAH!!!

And so we went back to Utah and of course on the way in to Utah there is a sign for the turn off to go to Dinosaur National Monument. We had called before we went there to make sure that they were open, and the visitor center was open until 4:30. We got there at 2:00, after having lunch in Colorado at 1:00, upon arriving the visitor center attendants preceded to tell us that the only way to see the fossils was to travel on the shuttle, and the last shuttle leaves at 1:30!!
Talk about frustration! They didnt even have a sign traveling eastbound for the Monuments turn off, if there would have been we would have been there in Plenty of time to see the fossils and would not have felt that our trip there was wasted. All we were able to get were pictures of the visitor center and pictures of some of the dinosaurs that they have from the monument back through Vernal.
The travel time from Strawberry to Colorado and back was over 6 hours! Wow,
we all had a long car ride home! And here is a truly awesome funnel cloud/ thunderstorm that was almost touching down right before strawberry reservoir.
We had an awesome trip and some good family time!