Our Wild Vacation!!!

So I have realized that I am not really great about this whole blogging thing. I forget that we have one! So sorry about that...but here's another post finally!!! Yay!!!

So last week Derek came to me and said that his boss had given him a few days off this week because he hadn't had any for a long time. So we decided to take the kids on a camping trip. They had been camping over night before, but never for two and a half days. So we were all excited and packed up the truck aka "The Beast," hooked on the boat, and off we were to the wonderful land of Kemmerer.

The first of the ride was great...we made it to Kemmerer in good time and only went through one tank of gas(mind you that we had only went about 100 miles) and we stopped at a gas station for worms. When we got out of the gas station, we noticed that there was a heck of a mess of black liquid underneath it. So Derek, all the mighty believer in that he can fix anthing, looked it over and decided that the brakes were leaking and were going to go out. So after the diagnosis, he hops back in the truck and starts heading out to go to the campground, meanwhile, I am freaking out in the seat next to him, especially when he starts pointing out the squishy brakes. Then to make things even better, the truck started chugging everytime he went to slow down. I can just imagine the people driving down the highway on the other side laughing at this huge old ugly truck that was squirting out oil going down the highway. So, about an hour later, and on his last nerve, we found the campground.

So after parking the Beast and educating it and the kids on profanities, we set up camp. Despite the rough ride up there, it was a beautiful spot. Amid all the deserty landscape and sage brush, there was this awesomely blue lake. We even lucked out and found a camping spot by a light post (Spencer is really afraid of the dark, so this was a big plus) and right across from a bathroom that had lights and running water...yay!!!! We did the dinner thing and then we went to bed. Since it was about 36 degrees that night, we finally figured out how to get the kids warmed up by about 3 am and then we went to sleep. (Oh yeah, and after Derek tinkered around with the Beast for a few more minutes).

The next morning we hauled the boat down to the dock and were praying that the Beast would stop when Derek backed the boat into the water! It did! So we took off for our days adventure. We rigged up the fishing poles and lathered on the sunscreen and started to relax. We found out that Spencer can cast out his pole farther than me now (he has a very proud daddy by the way) and that all the little lake bugs are attracted to sunscreen. So after a day fighting off bugs, catching seaweed and having fun(we really did have fun) we headed back to camp. It was then that we realized that the Beast was still leaving his mark everywhere we went. Nice big black oil stains. It was then too that we started joking about trading him in for the cash for clunkers sale and wondering if the car dealerships in Kemmerer were doing it, if we could even make it to Kemmerer. I guess that scared the Beast enough becuase as soon as we got back to camp, he showed Derek where his leak was. Some oil line thingy by the engine had craked and oil was spewing out of the line. So good old Mr. Fix himeself, with no tools or parts but the ones he had on him, fixed the leak and stopped the oil. I was so proud of him! I always thought he was weird because he could jimmy rig just about anything to fix it, and this time it really paid off. He even fixed a small gas leak with weather stripping glue stuff. So now I can't really joke about the mr. fix it thing because he is my Mr. wonderful!!!!!!! I think he is pretty dang proud of himself too!!!!

That night, we had a wonderful dinner, had some neighbors join us at the camp ground, and we slept great too. The next morning we went to the lake again and hung out in the sun. That night, we headed home. On the way home, the Beast purred like a kitten and only smoked for a minute or too!

So all in all, we had a lot of fun and we still didn't catch any fish, but we caught a lot of good memories from the trip! :) (awwwwwwwwwwww)! One of our favorite memories was watching the other boat guys go up to their trucks where the oil stains were from our truck, the day before, and walk all around their trucks and look underneath it to make sure it wasn't from them. I told you the Beast sure knows how to leave his mark. We were actually pretty proud of him!!!

We also learned a few lessons #1 Do not give up on a smoking old truck (they really do react to a threat) #2 SPF 50 suscreen might not always be SPF 50 #3 fixing a simple gas leak on a truck can cut the gas you use in half and save you money and #4 every trip has it's up and downs but at least we are together as a family having fun!!!!!