Counsins' Campout 2

And now for the concluding episode of our campout.

After another great breakfast by Charlie and Kent (bacon, pancakes and hashbrowns), we decided to hike the Alpine Lakes Trail, which is close to the top of Mount Wheeler. The trail is over 10,000 ft. and is 2.7 miles long, which is a pretty good hike for the littler ones.

This is the trailhead sign. There are multiple hikes from this trailhead, but we did the Alpine Lakes loop that goes to Lakes Stella and Teresa.

The hike only had a elevation gain of 600 ft over the 2.7 miles and wasn't too steep.

This is a picture of the beginning of the trail where they had put down some erosion control for the first hundred feet or so. It quickly became a dirt path.

This is a picture of our arrival at Lake Stella. Notice the snow fields on the opposite side of the lake. The older Parry and Jaffa cousins hiked to the snow fields and Blaine slid down one. Other hikers from the San Francisco bay area caught a picture of Blaine's slide and promised to email us a copy when they returned home.

Jill is closest to the camera in this picture. She was a real trooper without Paul and with her four children. In the background, you can see the snow field that Blaine slid down.

Charlie caught a picture of Ian when I was carrying him. She instructed me to get my head out of the way so that she could get a picture of Ian. On the last stretch, Ian fell asleep and leaned precariously almost horizontal making it challenging for Jill to hike while holding Kemry's insisting hand.

At Lake Stella, the grandkids tried unsuccessfully to build a raft without rope.

Nevertheless, Dallin decided to turn a log into a boat. He had a great time although he was soaked up to above his waist. To his credit, he didn't capsize.

Of course, they also had fun throwing rocks in the lake. Even Jedd and Blaine got into a contest to see who could get the other the wettest from rocks thrown into the lake by the other.

Here is Luke's technique.

At a rest stop along the hike. You can see (from left to right) JoLynn, a little bit of Natascha, Robyn, Kevin in red, Emmy and Julianne by Uncle Jeff who is sitting down and Zach.

Here is a picture of Lake Teresa. The kids played in the stream while we rested.

Charlie got this great picture of Blaine jumping successfully over the stream.

Dallin showed Haley how to take three sticks of candy and twist them into a new creation. I'm not sure how well this tasted as I later found a couple on the trail half eaten.

Later, we rested at camp. Zach and Robyn cooked a great dinner consisting of Dutch Oven chicken enchiladas.

The next day, we packed up and returned home. Yes, we had returned to the same place, located the location of Katelynn's fall into the cave and found out if her legend continued. (You'll have to ask one of the adventurers to find out if the legend continues.)

Haley asked Charlie if they could return next year and she replied that we only do this every 15 years. Haley then came to me and told me that I would be 73 years old when we returned again. Yea, right!

Cousins' Campout

Cousins' Campout 1

At the beginning of this week, Charlie's family joined the Parry's for about the 20th Cousins' Campout. While not as many of Charlie's siblings' families attended this one as in the beginning, it still is a fairly good-sized group with grandchildren and lots of fun.









This year, it was decided to return to the Great Basin National Park where we went 15 years ago and left our mark on the legends of the Lehman Cave tours thanks to Katelynn.





Here is a map showing the location of the event on the border of Utah and Nevada. Our driving route is highlighted in red. It was about 230 miles from home and the drive took a little over four hours.







Here is an ariel view of the park. The highest part is Mt. Wheeler, which is
13,063 above sea level and our camp was at about 7750 ft.

You can read the park's website for more details about the park.

http://www.nps.gov/grba/

This blog is more of a report on the campout than a report on the park.

Our vehicle was packed to the brim. We carried most of Robyn's family's camping stuff along with all of Charlie's, Blaine's and Kevin and Natascha's stuff. Blaine, Kevin and Natascha also rode along with us, so we borrowed Uncle Brent's trailer to carry part of the camping equipment. It was a real life saver.








This is a picture of the trailer shown at our camping site.















We arrived at the camp to find Jill's boys swinging from the trees.













Not to be outdone by her older brothers, Kemry climbed the tree too, but needed some help jumping down.


















We had plenty of help putting up our tent. Since we only had one hammer, rocks were used to start the tent stakes. Later, they each got a turn with the hammer. They all did a good job, especially Dallin with the hammer.










One of the natural wonders of the park were dirty faces. Luke really excelled in this at the beginning of the camp, but after having a dishpan bath he lost some of his zest.

Notice the dirt on Luke's leg. It deserves mentioning.










Here is a close up of Luke's face. He did pretty well drinking out of his water bottle, although it might have been good if he spilled some on his face.
















Ian picked up the slack when Luke's face became cleaner after his dishpan face. While Ian didn't get as dirty, he seemed to have been the most consistent.








The first evening, we just had hot dogs; something easy since we arrived at the campsite about dinner time.

From this pictures, it is not clear whether or not Dallin enjoyed his hot dog. Actually, he did enjoy it. He just wants you to see the chewed hot dog. Unfortunately, he swallowed it how so that there wasn't much to be seen.





This is a picture from the second day. Our campsite was next to a stream, which provided endless adventures. It was entertaining to her parents' instructions to not get their shoes wet while playing around the stream.



After a quick baseball game, Charlie pulled out buckets of stickers to decorate visors with. When they ran out of places to put stickers on their visors, they used their imaginations and started making boats with the stickers to play with in the stream.

















Below are some pictures of the end products.














































Notice the creativity used to maximize the number of stickers that could be used. Here Dallin used triangles to be dinasour teeth around the edge of his visor. Haley was good at this too.










Besides dinasours and shapes, there were letter stickers to put each name on the visors. Daniel was particularly good at this. He stacked about five letters on top of each other for each letter of his name. Unfortunately, we didn't get a picture of this technique.



























Notice Luke digging into a small package of M&Ms. Luke was particulary amazing whenever the candy was brought out. He developed an olympic like sprint to the candy.








After the morning's activities, we all headed to the visitor center to find out about cave tours. The Parrys along with Kevin, Natascha and Blaine went on the 90 minute tour, while the rest of us went on the 60 minute tour.
The kids seemed to enjoy climbing on the railings and jumping off of the walls more than the exhibits. By signing up for both tours, we wanted to see if cousin Katelynn's legend lived on and the Parrys' also had bets on which one of the grandkids with continue the legend by falling into the a cave pond.

On our first visit 15 years ago while taking a cave tour, Katelynn fell under the railing and into a cave pond during the tour. Some thought that she had fallen into a never ending cave shaft. For the following couple of years, we heard reports from others that the tour guides told the story of the little girl that fell into the pond, as a caution.
For the 60 minute tour, Sharon was our guide. She was very good.

Dallin volunteered to be the last person in our tour group and to carry the flashlight. Among his duties, he was to report to Sharon that all were accounted for when she turned off the lights in the cave during the tour.
Lehman cave is very dense with calcium formations.

There were many situations where the stalagmites and stalactites met to form columns.

The tour ended with a long man made tunnel to the outside. It was fun to make echos. Sharon had us all be quite while she banged on the outside door and we listened to the sound travel down the tunner.

The 60 minute tour ended without seeing any cave ponds or the place where Katelynn fell in, however those in the 90 minute tour located the location. They don't allow people into the area where Katelynn fell in anymore, but they could look and Jann spotted the location which is shown in the adjacent picture of the cave map.

The rest of the day was spent around camp, except that Paul took his children on the hike that we would go on the next day. That night, Jill and Paul served a great dinner of shreaded beef and dutch oven cheesy potatoes. After things settled down, we roasted marshmellows or set them on fire depending on which seemed the best use of the marshmellows. Then it was off to our tents. Paul had to work the next day, so he left about 10:30 to return home while the rest of us tried to get some sleep.

Stay tuned for Cousins Campout 2!!!!

One goal had been accomplished. We had returned to the site of Katelynn's dive. Only those present know, if the tour guides still tell Katelynn's adventure from 15 years earlier.