Camping Above Cascade - Part 3

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I am exhausted! It's a lot of work to enjoy our summer to the fullest. This time we went camping with my family in the Boise National Forest. Dig your own latrine, haul your own water, get eaten by horseflies type of camping. There were roughly a dozen adults and a dozen children under 18. Everyone found something that brought them great joy while we were up there. Everyone that is, except for the 17- and 15-year-old nephews, who are filled with teenage angst and can't function without electronics. We were camped next to a pond filled with frogs, polliwogs, bugs and shoe-sucking mud. My twelve-year-old niece made a small fortune retrieving lost children's shoes from the muck.

Kylynn showing off two of the frogs she liberated from the pond.

If mud and muck aren't your thing, my brother Joe and his wife Kerry brought up their horses. Everyone but my little Libby loved the horses. Libby is still chicken. She lives in fear the horse "will shake [her] off". Uncle Joe promised her the horse has never "shaken" anyone off, but she doesn't seem to believe him. If you knew my brother, you probably wouldn't believe him either.

I have been on a horse about four times since I was twelve, and all of those in the last couple of weeks. So of course when Kerry asked if I wanted to run a horse with her I said yes. So there I was clutching the reins and pommel and bouncing around in the saddle like a yo-yo. Things were going well and life was good. Then Kerry ran her horse past camp with me close behind. My horse did not want to run past camp, my horse wanted to run TO camp. She threw herself around a corner that was more then 90 degrees with me screaming "NO, NO, ARGGG, NO, AHHHHH!" My foot slipped out of the stirrup and I was clutching the horse for dear life. Thankfully I stayed on and only suffered minor bruises. Kerry got down to the end of the road and realized I wasn't there. She came running back to camp panic stricken. She was terrified that I had been thrown. I took pity on her and only rubbed it in for two days that she could have severely injured me. I also made it a point to show her my bruises and complain about my twisted ankle, just so she would learn her lesson.

The only time Libby even sat on a horse. Her cousin Aubrey (the racketeer) with her.

The children were covered with dirt and mud the entire time we were up there. We tried washing them in the creek, but they were too smart to go past their ankles in the frigid water. We are still trying to soak all the grime off of their feet.

This was Xander during a clean moment. Yes, he does seem to be a bit of a pervert.

Oh, I love the dirt.

I had a brief manly moment and chopped this pile of wood. It was a pathetic thing to see, but the wood was chopped, I walked away with all my phalanges, and I only got two blisters. I count that as a success.

It did rain the last full day we were there but it didn't really come down until everyone went to bed for the night. Then it stormed. Thankfully it had almost quit by the time we got up.Rain....The creator of family togetherness.

Joe took Ethan fishing and he caught his very first fish. And his second. He was very pleased with himself. He even ate a few bites and deemed it good.