Camping Crew, June 2017

Dericka said that She and Lynnora and I were the camping crew. Sometimes the camping crew gets visitors when we camp! We had different plans for our June camping trip, but ended up at Double Springs Campground near Mormon Lake. This ended up being a very good thing. It was much cooler than the Payson area, where we had originally planned on camping. It was pretty, we had the best campsites and mostly had the whole place to ourselves. The first night, Erica and Myrenda and their kids joined us for an evening around the campfire.

Erica's son was trying to start a fire with Lynnora's flint. None of them were successful. They finally used a match.

Made a German potato salad in the dutch oven to go with the hot dogs and fruit salad. Still getting the hand of using the dutch ovens.

Hanging around the campfire.

Cooking hot dogs.

Playing with sparklers.

The next day, we found out that we only had one more day to use firewood or charcoal due to increasing fire restrictions. My meal planning involved using the firepit and the dutch ovens, and so I had to do some recalculations. I had wanted to try a recipe that involved making a pie in the dutch oven, so decided to make it a day early, since it would keep.

Doesn't look perfect before it went it, but it turned out well!

We ate great as usual. Lynnora made a vegan lunch.

Stuffed French toast with strawberries for breakfast.

Since I couldn't make my foil dinners as I had planned, cooked all the veggies and meat in a skillet on the stove instead. Turned out pretty tasty.

We painted rocks for arts and crafts time.

They turned out really well too!

 We made some improvements this time. I put together a camp kitchen, that added to the convenience of finding what you needed when you needed it. We also improved our dish washing methods. We now have a really nice system that works a lot better for us. Here is Dericka demonstrating washing dishes!

It was a really hot week in Phoenix. We were lucky to be up in the woods so high. We saw elk twice. They were huge!

We enjoyed some great star gazing at night. I got these fun cards with constellations on them. We also had some great Uno games.

This was the first trial run of my new Yeti cooler. It worked pretty great! Especially using block ice.

I had another Coleman cooler that was supposed to be pretty good. It didn't seem to work any better than my old cooler. Even though I had made it a "toaster cover" of reflective insulation. We still had to add fresh ice to it every day. We weren't using block ice in this one though. It might have helped.

Dericka and I's tents at our site. Lynnora's tent was set up at the site next door. We have October dates selected for our next camping trip!