The Cabin: June trip

This past summer we were lucky enough to get too visit my Grandparent's cabin twice!  We took two family vacations to Utah, to watch my two brothers get married.  So while we were there, we spent a day relaxing and enjoying the back-country Uinta mountains. I have always really relished the opportunity to spend a day or two at the cabin.  For the June trip, I was able to drive up in the evening with Mollie's dad and the boys and leave the next night.  When we arrived at the cabin, it was after dinner and the cabin was cool.  We started to get the wood burning stove going to provide a little warmth.  The boys positively love watching fire and fire building.  I think Harrison exclaimed something like, "This cabin has fire!  It has everything."  Yeah, he's going to make a great boy scout. The boys shared one room, and Brent got another.  I just slept on the couch keeping the fire. The next day both my sister Sara and my brother James came up with their kids (also in the area for the wedding).

I just love the mountains.  I mean take a look at those! It is amazing how refreshing it can be to go spend a day out in nature. The cabin is in the Weber River valley. This June the river was very full.  The past winter and spring had been exceptionally wet for Utah, and as the snow was coming off the mountains, all the local rivers were full.  As you can see from the photo, it was only a few feet from being over the bridge.  I am guessing that it was about 10 feet over it's normal spring level.

Going to visit the river is always a part of our cabin stays.  But this time we could not really do anything but look at it. Usually by June it is only a 1-2 feet deep.   Just barely enough to tube in, as there are some place where you end up scraping bottom.  But this was a raging torrent.  There were new streams that popped up in other places which are usually just grass ravines, so the kids played a bit in those.

We also took some time in the afternoon to go hiking up the mountain that the cabin was on.   We found a hiking stick for all the kids.  They mostly treated them as wands or light sabers or scythes. The crew that I led up was my two boys and Sara's four oldest and my uncle John's daughter. With varying levels of interest and ability, we weren't able to make it all the way to the top. We had some very energetic hikers (Mark) who were disappointed that we could not make it the whole way up.  But we got a great view of the valley.

One other fun thing that we got to do, in part because of all the rain, was have a camp fire.  I have been the to cabin dozens of times, and I can't remember the last time that the fire hazard was not either high or extreme.  In the typically dry summer, you are not supposed to have outdoor fires.  But this time, the fire hazard was "low".  The kids were all very excited about this, and were very active in helping prepare the fire.  I figured I could let some of the older kids learn to use the ax.  It was tough to find the right piece of wood to match their strength.  Adam loved it and Mark was very envious. After chopping, we started to set up the kindling tepee.  Everyone wanted to place sticks and help out.  Then once it was roaring, we had a hot dog roast.