If life ever gets dull....go camping!

We have so many adventures when we go camping that I am almost ready to swear off of it...

We decided to escape town during Round-up since the kids were out of school and we saw what it was all about last year.  At first we considered camping on the coast but the forecast looked like rain there, so Shawn found a great camp site at Umatilla Forks campground right at the edge of the Umatilla National Forest.  It was beautiful!

l-r: Nolan, Abram, Pace, Isabelle, Shawn, Maddie:

We went on a walk first thing after setting up our camp.  We found this strange "snake grass" growing everywhere; such a pretty color and texture that it added to the landscape!:

The boys couldn't stay away from the water and quickly discovered that there were crawdads everywhere they looked.  Nolan is showing me one that he caught:

But then he decided to bring it closer and just as I took this picture, the crawdad maneuvered around to where it could pinch him!

He's caught hundreds of crawdads and never been pinched before...We sat for a long time trying to figure out how to get that thing to let go!  When we finally got it off it left a good pinch mark on his hand:

 Soon we discovered an empty hornets nest and threw rocks at it until it fell off of the tree that it was attached to.  Nolan wanted to save that treasure forever! (Too bad he forgot to load it up when we left)

We had a nice meadow by our campsite and everyone kicked the soccer ball around for a while:

Chopped (and gathered) wood:

Nolan was pretty excited to use the hatchet he got for his birthday and he chopped through at least three logs, including one twice this size while we were there:

I've got to say that a major reason that I go camping is for the boys at the age they are.  They love being mountain men and everything about the experience is always so exciting to them.  Isabelle was also really into the whole experience, keeping the fire fueled and hoping to start every fire. There were several arguments between the boys and Isabelle about who got to start the fires!

Isabelle and Pace:

Cooked and ate around the fire:

(This was discovered to be a great way to keep smoke out of your face!)

Isabelle, Maddie and Pace:

Abram with a really anemic-looking biscuit:

Maddie read us some Grimms Fairy tales- L-r: Nolan, Abram, Maddie and Belle:

We spent a long night - the first one always is - you have to get tired enough to be able to sleep good on the hard ground!

The next day we decided to hike in to the Umatilla National Forest.  The trails were beautiful!  Also the hikes were really long.  Too long for Pace to do the whole thing, so we decided to hike for one hour in and then turn around. As we walked, several of us mentioned that it would be SO FUN to ride horses on this trail!

We thought we had been having some pretty great adventures up to this point, but the REALLY big adventures started not long after we turned around to head back. I leaped across a boggy part in the trail and as soon as I left the ground I felt something pop inside my lower right leg.  It HURT!  I tried to stand up anyway and couldn't put any weight on my right leg. Isn't it lucky that the kids documented the whole experience with pictures?!??🤣

Shawn tried to back pack me and carry me for awhile, but he had to set me down a lot and it was slow going.

Finally he decided to make a stretcher for he and the kids to carry me out. For about 30 minutes he and Nolan and Maddie were finding poles and getting them ready.

 Meanwhile Isabelle held my leg up and Pace serenaded me:

The stretcher:

Luckily we all had sweatshirts and Shawn tucked the sleeves into them and then pushed the poles through the sleeves.

We had fun with this! The kids took pictures of me with my colorful fall leaves that i was not going to leave behind!

And we were off. Maddie avoiding the camera because: we're camping = no makeup:

It was incredibly slow-going because they had to set me down every two minutes or so.  After about 10 stops I asked Shawn how long he thought it would take to get out and he thought it would be a couple more hours!  It was lunchtime and we were getting hungry and that sounded so discouraging! But we were persevering and no one was complaining 👍

I was so worried the whole time that someone would meet us on the trail; I felt like it would be SO embarrassing!!  One of the kids said how hungry they were and I was just opening my mouth to say that I WAS hungry but that I was MUCH  more worried that someone would suddenly be seen coming up the trail, when everyone yelled, "HORSES"!!!  I rolled off of the stretcher lickity split - Shawn couldn't believe how fast - and tried to get to the side of the trail.

A couple, Patty and ? Rush from Winatchi Washington were riding their horses up the trail.  They were so nice and concerned that I didn't feel as silly as I thought I would.  Patty told me that she had torn her Achilles tendon before and thought that was what it was.

Waiting for the Rush's to turn their horses around:

They were also gracious enough to let me ride one of their horses back to camp which was so wonderful because I'm not going to lie: I was starting to feel a little desperate to get there!:

Then everyone that had wanted to ride horses got their wish because they let all the kids ride all around our camp:

They also came back the next day to check up on us.  There are some really nice people in the world!

Because I was fine unless I put weight on my foot, we decided to stay on the camp out.  It wouldn't have done any good to go home because none of the doctor's offices are open during round-up anyway. Luckily I had brought several books to read, Shawn was willing to carry me where I needed to go and the kids kept having a great time:

Our last adventure on this camping trip was that when we were FINALLY ready to pull out at noon on Friday - our car wouldn't start.  The battery was dead.

We were the only ones in the camp and our cell phones were all on low battery.  Shawn walked out to a road and found someone who came and gave us a jump start.  Again, a super willing to help and kind man, who said that very thing had happened to him last time he went camping.

We got home and called the pediatrist - he used to be in our ward- and he said it indeed sounded like a torn Achilles tendon.  He sent a boot to the house and I will be seeing him soon at his office.  Apparently walking the hills in Pendleton (which I really enjoy and do A LOT) has been hard on it.  There's not much left to enjoy here...

And that concludes a well-documented narrative of our most recent camping adventures!