A hike and A boat trip... kind of

Our other events for the Independence day weekend ended up being a bit of an adventure. 

The first was an attempt at a hike on the 3rd. We headed up to the Catherine Pass trail for hike one of our favorite spots. We were just over a mile away from the trailhead when we saw the road blocked by a gate and a sign saying that the road to the trails would not be open until July 4th... like 12 hours later. We cursed the late snows this year, and then got out and decided to wander around the mountain. About 30 minutes later, it started to rain pretty hard.

Finn was a pretty big fan of the colored licorice, even though he did not eat it with any speed.

 We had packed a picnic and stopped on these rocks to eat, and luckily things were still dry while we had our dinner.

 We did get to see this very awesome double rainbow on our way back to the car. It was a high point of our wet time.

 Our second adventure of the weekend has only one photo, but plenty of exciting details. We tried to take out the inflatable boat that was a Christmas gift to us. Up to this point it had been sitting in it's box. The first fun part was that the box said a pump was included in the bag with all the other details, so Caleb did grab either of our two battery powered pumps... and the pump that was included was a hand pump. By the time it was inflated, we had already had our sun umbrella blown down about 4 times, and had discovered that lakes in Utah do not have anything that resembles a beach, even if it claims to.

We only own 4 life jackets, so we suited up the kids and headed toward the water. As soon as the boat was in, Gavin and Henry hopped in and Wyatt and Finn both started to cry and panic. We finally coaxed/tossed Wyatt into the boat and got him seated by Gavin in the middle. Finn was clinging to me like some kind of wild monkey, so we pried him off and I climbed into the back and took him on my lap while Caleb got in the front. The first thing we realized is that it was extremely windy on the water and also that we probably need 4 paddles the size of the ones that we had in order to get anywhere on the water. Also, we probably needed one less 2 year old sitting on my lap in the boat screaming his head off in terror.

So after a few minutes of frantic paddling by Caleb and I, and after I had already smacked Gavin in the head once with the paddle while trying to switch sides with Finn in my lap, we had gotten about 20 yards from the shore. Wyatt had calmed down by this time and even tho any amount of wake from bigger boats seemed to startle him, he wasn't crying... at least not until I was trying to paddle on the other side again with Finn having a tantrum on my lap, and I smacked Wyatt in the head with my paddle! With only one of us paddling from the front of the boat (Caleb) and one of us wrestling the angry monkey and accidentally hitting people with paddles in the back of the boat (Marci), things started to deteriorate pretty quickly. We were being blown ashore a ways down from where we got in the water. 

We finally decided it was time to call it quits and we let ourselves wash up in a nice dirty swampy areas and got all the younger boys out and started walking back. 

Caleb and Gavin did try to go out on their own another time, but with the wind and the short paddles, they washed back up a little farther down in an even muddier spot and then carried the boat back.

It was not a boat adventure that we will soon forget, but after it was over we got some good laughs and packed up to head out, just as the sun was beating down and all of the gross bugs were coming out to prey on us.