Out of Service, Unplugged and Offline Can Be Great

Possibly some of you may have noticed I have been a little MIA again in the blogging world. I have missed reading some of my favorite blogs, and sharing posts but I have to say I've enjoyed being offline quite a bit too!


A few days after I returned from the week at the youth girls camp, I of course (because this is me we are talking about) came down with another bad cold.
But you know, it's just as easy to be sick at home as it is up camping.  We have an annual family camping trip, where my entire family tries to get together for a week and go up and spend some time with each other in the fabulous mountains of Utah.  So I decided sick or not, I was packing my bags and going up with the Fam!

This year we were going up to one of my favorite places. I love this particular area, it's seriously abundant in wildlife.  If you are familiar with Utah, these pic's are from the Smith and Morehouse area, as well as Mud Flatts area.

In fact, my sister (lucky her) spotted a large 400 pound bear the first night.  She took an early night drive down the canyon to make a phone call. Because the dirt road was so much worse than normal this year, it ended up taking her an extra 40 minutes.  Lucky her, because a bear decided to cross the road in front of her, just down the road from where our campground was at.  (Ya, I was kinda jealous she got to see one on the trip!)

Rest or Play?
I had planned to just relax and nurse my cold read a book or two.  Of course that wasn't going to happen, when you have 8 adorably cute and fun nieces and nephews up there who love you and want to play with you, you well skip the rest and play through the cold:)

I didn't do any major hiking as I would have liked.  But I did get some light hiking in, and have officially turned yet another one of my nieces into a hiker.  This 4 year old, can hike as good as most adults now, and go for miles!

I didn't get any fishing in myself, which was my own fault.  I thought I had left my fishing license in my pink fishing vest which I keep in my parents 5th wheel, but apparently I left it at home. So no fishing for me.  So instead I just helped my nieces and nephews fish. In other words, if you have been fishing with kids, it means lots and lots of replacing hooks and adjusting lines:)  Good think I love them!

We had beautiful weather all week.  At around 7800 feet, we were low enough in elevation to avoid some of the bigger rain storms that hit higher up, and we were high enough to sleep in the comfy snuggle in your sleeping bag 40's and have days in the t-shirt wearing 70's... Perfect temps if you ask me!
We were camped near a set of streams and a river.  So of course I spent a lot of time going down with the kids and watching them throw rocks in the water.

Campfires every night, and the kids are getting older so its fun to just leave them in charge of the fires and let the little Pyromaniac's in them come out a little.  Don't even have to cook my own marshmallows, one of the 4 year old nieces has learned to cook them like a pro and likes to make sure I have as many as I want:)

We saw lots of deer every day.  In fact three deer bedded down on the grass right near our camp every night.  We had some elk that must have passed through out camp one night, as they left us some poo, to prove they were there, haha. I had a raccoon that enjoyed running around on the tarp I had on the ground on my tent entrance in the middle of each night.  A few bucks, one was even a 6 point buck, he was a beauty to see!  The bear my sister saw, apparently stuck around the area too as a few others spotted him walking around the camps early one morning.  But unfortunately, I never did get to see him.
Freaked my sister out with a snake I found, it had just died and she is so easy to prank! (No I didn't pick it up, but letting her think her daughter did was good enough to do the job!)

Did I get to run in the mountains?  Nope, I don't really want to talk about it much, it frustrates the heck out of me.  I will share more on it next week maybe.  But in short, I haven't been able to run in almost 2 weeks now:(  Which is really a bummer because training in the mountains is my favorite type of running!

Whiplash and a Hurt Ego!
The entire week, I watched the kids having so much fun they tripped and fell and scrapped up lots of knee's.  I kept telling them to be more careful and watch where they were going.
I hate to even admit this, but ya as I was taking down my tent and pulling the cover off it.  I backed up over a tree stump and took a fall.  Right on my tailbone, back and head.  I am sure I will pay for the tailbone for months.  Woke up Sunday with whiplash, oh my neck is super sore, I literally cannot look up toward the sky, my neck is that hurt. Ouchy!
Apparently, falling as an adult over a stump does much more damage than it does to a kid, ha ha..
Truthfully, I think my pride was far more wounded than anything, as I secretly hoped no one but my dad saw ha ha:)

We did have a little trouble with my parents trailer as we were leaving. I rode up with them, and just as we were finishing packing up and ready to hitch the 5th wheel to the pick-up.  The hydraulics that lift the trailer jacks up to get it onto the truck, decided to break.
Apparently even though we took it slow on our way up a week ago, the rough road getting into the place jarred loose the part that makes it work.
I do have to pat myself on the back though.  I figured out a trick, and a lot of muscle and sweat and my dad and I were able to crank it up manually enough to get it onto the truck.

I should lie about this, but... I actually went an entire week without washing my hair.  Ya, it was probably pretty gross by the end of the week and there is a reason for the hat in the pic above! I put a brush through it half way through and realized it looked better unbrushed, LOL. *cringe* So I joined one of my sisters in the no wash, no brush week... I know terrible, but when you have a cold you realize you don't really care about stuff like that, and after a few days, it quit bothering me ha ha.  I know you totally are cringing right now!  The weird thing is, I totally could have washed it, especially on the day's I took a quick rinse off the sweat shower.

About a week my cold finally broke and has been in the process of making its way out of my body:)

My sis will want to kill me if she see's that I
put a no make up picture of her up on the blog.
But I don't think she reads my blog much and
I loved this cute picture I took of her son!

Which is great because I now get to throw together a wedding today.  Yup, you read that right.  I am a little behind and well I haven't done a single thing to get ready for tomorrow's wedding.  It's going to be a late night, but it will get done and look great!
But on the plus side, I have been booking weddings like crazy lately.  I am going to be having my busiest summer and fall in over 4 years.  Which is great, I am very happy about this!

So that is where I have been, and why I have been offline.  The great thing about the mountains, you don't really get cell service up in them, in my case this week not at all.  It was a 40 minute drive just to get to one bar of service:)
Truthfully, taking time away from phones and computers is a great vacation in itself!  Which is why, you may notice me go MIA quite a bit this summer.  I can't help it, I love to camp and love to hike!

This year I have come across a few new awesome camping gadgets and must have items for the outdoors.  I am totally going to share them with you, because they are fabulous and some of my greatest finds in years. But this post is long enough so I will save it for another day. But I promise to share soon, because they will make your camping and hiking adventures even better!

What have you been up to lately?  Any great news I may have missed?
Do you love to camp?  Planning any camping trips soon, or just returned from any?