Camping on the Big Horns

We finally made it up the Big Horn Mountains to camp for the weekend. We left Lovell mid afternoon and got back late Saturday night, but were wishing we could have stayed longer! We took our camper up earlier in the week so we could park it next to our friends, the Mangus', and camp with them over the weekend. After getting our camp set up (amongst all the cow pies...which was my only complaint about the camp...the boys were covered in poo), the boys made a fire and we got things ready for foil dinners and cooked them on the fire. Our friends showed up as we were eating and they joined us and ate their dinner, and then we roasted marshmallows for dessert. We stayed up talking while the kids played ghost in the graveyard.

Last year in school, Carson won a hammock in an art contest. He has been dying to get to use it! He finally got to this weekend. It was a pretty comfortable little hammock!

The boys were in heaven playing in the trees and finding sticks!

There was a nice little meadow just on the other side of the trees behind our camp. 

While we were working on getting dinner ready, it started to rain and hail on us. We were sure happy to have a camper to go into!

Carson and Travis eating some muddie buddies as they waited out the storm

Making foil dinners!

Travis used some bailing twine, wire and sticks he found to build a swing.

Getting the fire going!

Landon got a little too close to the fire and singed the eyelashes on his right side!

Travis doing a little whittling.

These pictures don't do the sunset justice, but it was beautiful!

Saturday morning, we got up and the boys were quite eager to get a fire built, so they worked on that while I got things ready for breakfast. Breakfast in the mountains is my favorite! We had pancakes, bacon and eggs. We brought up Grandpa Asay's  little homemade grill to cook it all on and it was delicious!

Breakfast!

After breakfast was done and cleaned up, we sat around and talked with our friends while the kids played in the trees trying to build traps and snares to catch chipmunks. Around 2 we loaded up the fishing gear and headed to fish up at the Ranger Station. The kids had a blast catching frogs in the marsh! The little frogs were everywhere! You would take a step and have 2 or 3 jump away. It provided lots of entertainment for the kids and a few of them ended up getting pretty wet and muddy!

Travis trying to make a snare.

Travis and his tadpole.

Christian trying to fish the stream next to the pond. He was able to catch one fish here but none in the ranger station pond!

Carson and one of the frogs he caught.

The kids catching frogs. They were wet and muddy when they were done!

Travis fishing at Ranger Station Pond.

We didn't have much luck and more and more people started showing up after we got there, so we decided to move to the pond over by the cow camp. We had more success there and they were a lot bigger fish.

Happy little purple flowers!

Travis getting some pointers from his dad on what to use for fishing.

I was even able to catch one little fish!

Travis's catch. Travis, Carson, and their friend, Jared were having a contest to see who could catch the most. Travis was the only one that caught anything, so he won!

We fished until about 6:30 and then headed back to camp. We at some taco salad fast and then packed up our camp and headed home. We decided to leave the camper and came back Sunday afternoon to bring it back down the mountain to clean it all out and get it ready for our next camping adventure!