Camping

We finally got to go camping this year. Its been long over due!! We went up to Lamoille in the Thomas Canyon camp ground where we met up with my parents. Briana came with us too. We all had a blast. The weather was perfect, not to hot and best of all there were no biting bugs!!!
The pictures are a bit mixed up.

Jessie diggin' a smore!!

Marisa with hers-we had taken a 4 mile hike earlier that day so she was exhausted.

A mighty camper

A tired camper

Up at Island Lake the girls became real good friends with a chipmunk-he really liked our trail mix. He liked it so much that he was willing to get in their hands to take it. Its quite funny how many nuts they can put in their cheeks.

Marisa's turn to feed the chipmunk

Her Jessie and Briana have braved the cold water of Island Lake. They were hoping that the log they have could be a boat to float on-it wasn't quite big enough. They wanted to use it to get out to the island in the middle of the lake.

While Jessie and Briana played in the lake, Marisa decided to play with something else. She thought that the water in the lake was to cold so......................

walking in the snow barefoot was so much better!!!

Especially sliding down the snow in your shorts.

Yes, this is much better than playing in the lake that is to 'cold'.

Hmmm...........I'm not sure that the snow was actually warmer than the lake.

Oooohh..........the 'freezing' temperature of the snow finally caught up-her feet were glowing pink!! and a bit on the painful side as they started to 'thaw'.

Back at the lake, Jessie and Briana decided to play on the big log. They wanted to move it but it was slightly to big.

They played in the water for about 30min but never got totally wet; we were waiting for them to fall in. We were kind of disappointed that they never fell in.

My mighty mountain man..........so serious

Island Lake. Its a 2 mile hike up to it. The girls were ready to quit after 200yds, but we cracked the 'bull whip' a few times and we made it.

There are mountain goats up in the rocks but we didn't see any; maybe another day.

Jessie taking a break on the trail

Little Miss taking a break

She was having a blast leading the way both up and down until she fell and skinned her knee, then she let Jessie and Briana lead the way back down.

This is the creek that comes out of the lake. On the trail, there is a bridge to cross it right at a waterfall. Its really pretty.

Here we are on out way up; we are about 1/4 mile from the start.

There aren't very many trees along the way to Island Lake. Thankfully, it wasn't very hot. You start getting into the trees the closer you get to the lake.

Getting charged up for the hike.

Breakfast time. Gotta get charged up for the day.

Mango's are a good source of......................good hiking nutrients.

Hanging out

A face that could get away with just about whatever she wanted.

Hey, a picture of me; how rare! Actually, I must give credit to Bryan for all of the camping pictures since he took them. I brought my camera but forgot to put a card in it, therefore, it was useless. Thankfully, Bryan came prepared.

Larvae, Insects, Reptiles and Crustaceans

I can now say that I really know how my mom felt when her daughters would bring 'creatures' home and with me being like her and actually looking forward to these days its been quite exciting.


These tent caterpillars we found in Lewis Canyon but decided not to bring them home. I explained to the girls that they like to eat the leaves on just about anything so they ere content to save the ones that had somehow made it into the creek and then try to find the biggest ones around. I think we looked at literally 100's of caterpillars.

These Tiger Swallowtails were also all over Lewis Canyon. The girls almost had a couple land on them but that's the closest we got to bring any of them home plus we've had a few around here so no need to add more.

They were sure pretty though-literally all over the canyon.

She is so my daughter!!! Not that I had any doubts. Jessie was playing at the neighbors were they had found this snake. She not only identified it as a Bull Snake(not poisonous), she brought it home. I was so proud of her!!

She was quite proud of herself as well.

This was the second bullsnake found that week and this one was almost half the size of the other one-it was huge!

We let him go out back and wished him my gophers in his future.

Okay the next few photos are of a creature that the girls found, brought home and it is something that I had never seen or brought home myself-that SCARY!!!! I always managed to bring something home. Needless to say these little things had me stumped-what are they??!!

The girls were getting bored one afternoon so I sent them outback into the pasture that is behind the house to go catch some tadpoles. The whole meadow is flooded and there are a lot of frogs so I figured they should be able to find some tadpoles.

They were gone for a little over an hour. When they some back, they looked like they had become one with the mud but with huge smiles on their faces and a Tupperware container filled with muddy water and these creatures of the 'deep'.

I have to admit that when Marisa first picked up one of her 'catches', I wanted to knock it out of her hand. It looks like something that would bite you, or suck your blood or...............some sort of parasite. After I got control of my almost out of control emotions, I thought well, maybe they are baby crawdads, some sort of leach or they look a lot like a miniature horseshoe crab but we don't have those around here. I was determined to figure out what they were!! I spent an hour on the Internet trying to find these disturbing creatures.

In the meantime, the girls had fun holding them. They have 'legs' that look like feathers and they move really fast.

This is the underside of one-its a bit muddy and yes, I have a glove on. After an hour of research, I finally found them. It put my mind at ease until I read that they ate mosquito larvae and then I was stressed that they were all going to die and then we would have that many more mosquitoes and then I would lose that much more blood and then...........we needed to let them go!!!

What are they? Oh yeah-they are called "Tadpole Shrimp" and are a type of freshwater crustacean that don't get much bigger than your finger, they live in ponds(or flooded meadows) were mosquitoes flourish and are completely harmless.

Unfortunately, we were not able to release all of them that they had brought home-there was a bunch of them too, but due to their sensitive nature most of them had died.

Well thats all for now but more summer fun to come!!!