Lebaron Reservoir

While our tomato plants were home withering into crispiness at 110-degree-plus last week, we were staying cool at my most favorite place in the world. Lebaron Reservoir in the Tushar Mountains.

I've been camping here since I was born and my mom has been camping here since she was a little girl. It is truly a beautiful place and surrounded by an almost untouched wilderness area; a place that really is an epitomy of who I am and what I live for and love. I will admit I've thought of disappearing into this forest, Alexander Supertramp-style in the past when life has been hard, and I even still do to this day on occasion when I'm feeling stressed. For now I'll have to be content visiting during the summer though. Kyle might shoot me if I leave him to raise baby girls alone. The recently-popular Paiute ATV trail has caused the mountain more traffic in the past years but it is still not overun with out of state campers like the closer, bark-beetle-deadened Cedar Mountain. This year the Tushars still had a lot of snow on the peaks, and the lake was very clear and cold. One evening, as we were up on Big Johns Flat viewing wildlife at sunset, we noticed a dead elk laying in one of the meadows. There was movement near it and, looking closer, we saw a BEAR chowing down on the elk. Cool! The only thing I can complain about is the increased prices of camping. I'm used to free camping. Several years ago after installing an "improved" pit toilet (whats to be improved with pit toilets? deeper pits with less splashing?) they started charging $3.00 a night. We were paying $3.00 a night up until this year when they started charging $10.00 a night! TEN! With no campground changes! Boo.

As far as camping with babies goes, this trip went much better than the last one we took during Memorial Day weekend when the girls were only 3 months old. This time when we left town the girls had been struggling with getting decent naps and going to sleep and staying asleep at nights(we are currently going through the 4-month-old sleep regression period). While we were on the mountain they napped beautifully! I'm talking 2 or 3 hour naps even with all the noise going on around them. By the third night me and Kyle were looking at each other in amazement as both girls were falling asleep, side by side, on their own and staying asleep often until 5 or 6 am and even one time until 8 am! WHAT WERE WE DOING that we could try and replicate at home to get them to sleep like this? Could we bottle up the mountain air and bring it home with us? Maybe we just wore them out with the walks in the carriers, the loud card games, and requiring them to participate in s'mores time around the campfire. Whatever it was, it didn't last past our camping trip, but it was nice nonetheless! The last picture of them in diapers-only was on the last day of camping and a result of them running out of clothes due to their excessing spitting up and their mothers lack of planning. No sunburns though; the only injury they suffered was their Aunt Rachelle calling them hillbilly babies. Yes maybe :)

Feels Like a Break

Can you believe that hiking 12 miles up and down the side of a mountain actually felt like a break? I think parenting twins has to be classified as some type of extreme survival sport (I think Rachel would agree) so last week when we were able to get away, it felt awesome! We split the girls up and each Grandma took one for the day. We had originally planned to leave the girls with Grandmas overnight while we backpacked to Signal Peak, camped at Further Water and came down Browns Point Trail the next morning but we changed our minds at the last minute (separation anxiety, yes) and decided to dayhike up to the summit and back down by nightfall. We hit the trail with Kalin, Tia, and David around 8am and made our way up the bouldery switchbacks. There were still big snowdrifts in the shaded canyons and the temperatures were oh-so-refreshingly-cool! We were walking across one snowdrift when one of us noticed small black melty holes in the ice. Peeking down into them, we found that we were actually walking on a big ice bridge that was still frozen over a deep ravine filled with freezing cold water! Yikes! Once we were all safely across, the boys had fun throwing big boulders onto the ice, watching them break through and fall through to the pools below. We lunched with the pine ants and then summited at 2:00 pm, six miles into the hike. Our goal was to make it to the junction of trails before turning around. Once we did that we rested a bit and then headed back down. It was miserably hot at the bottom and Kyle's bruised and battered ankles and shins (he fell a couple of times) and ALL of me was glad to be back to the truck. Thank you Pine Valley Wilderness! Thank you Grandmas! Thank you IcyHot!