Emergency Camping Planning
I looked at big name areas, like the Grand Tetons, or other well known areas. They were all booked up already - at least any campgrounds among trees, which is what I mostly wanted. Aspens and Pines and mountains and clean forest air. Clear places for my kids to play wild. Perhaps a small stream to step in and hear burbling at night. While I am always looking for National Parks to visit and cross off on my poster (yes, I have an actual poster I got for Christmas with scratch off National Parks on it), I realized that it was way too late to book one at this point.
Yellowstone 2024. These National Parks are spoiling me for what I expect for camping
I had basically given up on getting a trip together for June, but then tonight I looked at more local campgrounds in the mountains in Utah, and found a campground in Big Cottonwood Canyon only an hour away. In the mountains - check. Among both pines and aspens - check. I wanted a site that was more spread out from other campers as well, so no one would be bothers by our kids playing wild in the woods - check. I even found a sight next to a stream - check - although it is in the watershed area for Salt Lake, so no playing in it.
I am the more avid camper than Avram. He enjoys the outdoors, but I am the driver behind all camping we do. And we are camping for a total of 7 nights later this summer (broken up by a hotel in the middle, for showers and ocean views). So it isn't like we aren't camping already. But I have always wanted to take my kids camping in our own beautiful mountains here in Utah, preferably in the High Uintas. I don't think we are going to be in the high uintas, more like the low Uintas, but it is still the mountains.
We have camped once in the mountains together, but that was 7 years ago, so it has been awhile. That was also a very cold Memorial Day weekend trip up in the actual high Uintas, where it was incredibly cold at night still. We actually forgot a sleeping bag (the first and only time that has ever happened), and so we had cold kids, Elisheva developed a bad earache the entire trip, baby Gareth got sunburned, and for the final cherry on top, a recently potty-trained Athena was having nothing to do with the vault toilets, and peed through every piece of clothing we had brought for her. We ended up leaving a night early in defeat, and I worried for months that one of my favorite activities, camping, was ruined forever. Perhaps having seven kids had pushed the crazy over the top and we could no longer enjoy something I had always loved.
Better parts of our camping trip, including playing with cousins and hammocks
Thankfully none of that was the case. We have been on many, many camping trips since then and have learned a few lessons. Mainly - we don't enjoy camping at too cold or too hot of locations, little kids do better with flush toilets, and just because one camping trip is hard doesn't mean the entire hobby is bad. Everything has its ups and downs. This campground has flush toilets, and I checked the usual weather for late June and it is in acceptable ranges for us, so hopefully everything is covered on that front. We always seem to travel to other states to camp, or far flung corners of Southern Utah, so I am hopeful that this will pave the way as the first annual trip to closer Uinta or Wasatch mountains in northern Utah. I love our mountains here, almost as much as I love the ocean. And yet we have camped next to the ocean far more than we have in our own mountains.
I am excited to not have to drive an entire day to camp, and to have a more low-key laid back camping experience. When we are destination camping like at Sequoia national park or in Monterey on the coast we go-go-go during the day. For this trip I want to leisurely cook large breakfasts and sit around the campfire enjoying hot chocolate in the mornings.
Camping in San Simeon in Summer of 2022
I want to play some casual board and card games at the camp table. I want to hear my kids playing in the distance (or running screaming from bears and moose, I am not particular) while I lie in my tent with the windows open and the wind rustles through the aspens surrounding me. I want to eat gooey s'mores at night while seeing more stars than I ever see in my light polluted city sky.
Not everything about toasted marshmallows are amazing, like when your kids gets it on your face - San Simeon 2022
I don't want to lie down at night with two toddlers and my husband and not-thick-enough memory foam mats for a bed in a small tent (yes, we camp with two tents, and the rest of our kids are in another tent. This is the way.), but nothing is every perfect and wonky sleeping arrangements are the price we pay for the glory of camping.
Sleeping with babies in 2024 in Yellowstone
Our two tents - one ten man for the kids, one six man for parents and any babies/toddlers. Hamburger Rock outside of Canyonlands October 2022
Avram knows that I get itchy feet. I am like Pa Ingalls, but instead of constantly moving my family to a new frontier where I will wrest a farm out of the woods or prairie, I instead dream of endless travel. Some people are obsessed with Paris, or Italy, or big cities like New York. I dream of road trips up the west coast, or playing hopscotch among the big five Parks in Utah (do I live in the best state? Maybe). The United States has so many climates and natural features and cool cities and fun locations that I could spend my life traveling its roads and sleeping in its natural wonder and never run out of places to go. I plan one vacation, and like a growing fractal it spins out and inspires me to plan another vacation. The number of future vacations that I have booked while still on a current vacation is quite large. Avram well knows the look I get in my eye when I envision a new AirBnb while still cooling my heels in the current one. My fractals of vacations (both camping and otherwise) grows and grows. Now that Enoch is doing well enough to do activities, while still being very limited in his endurance, I have been making up for lost time by planning a trip that then inspires the next trip and so on and so forth until our entire rest of the year is booked.
Since last post I have also added on a fall weekend in St. George (love that place) and Avram and I are going on our first ever trip alone that isn't to a conference for his work since our honeymoon. Yes, the honeymoon we took 20 years ago. You may be wondering how we have kept the magic alive in our marriage. Well, it certainly hasn't been through couple vacations!* We are going to San Francisco in October to see Cat Stevens. I love Cat Stevens and I love San Francisco and I love Avram so this is a perfect match.
Our first trip to San Francisco for a conference in 2011.
Although fractals can continue to spin out in ever expanding repeating patterns, sadly the months of the year, our budget and even my energy do have an end, so I absolutely cannot add any more trips onto this year. But....I am already dreaming about 2026. We have been talking about taking our family on a religious pilgrimage for years across America to see church sites. Hopefully that will actually happen in 2026. And assuming only a couple of children are mauled by bears or adopted by wolf tribes to become one of the pack, we will also go on the second annual mountain camping trip here in Utah. Plus there is spring break, and fall break, and, and....
*I recommend marrying someone you like spending time with, and then find ways to spend time with them in regular life. Like on walks at night around your neighborhood. Long talks when you should be sleeping. Date nights that sometimes have looked like making a nice meal when our kids are asleep, and now look like leaving the kids with frozen pizza and a movie while we run away to a restaurant and adult conversation.
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