Bartlett in June

Adam went to Bartlett the week before Sam went to camp.  They had some work projects for anyone that wanted to come up and help, so Jamie and Adam went up Friday evening, got him set up, and Jamie came home the next day.

Before we dropped Sam off at Aspen Ridge we drove up and said hi to Adam.  (Okay, yes, his mom needed to see that he was okay.)  Of course he was.

Nice photo bomb, Sam.

A Madeleine letter to Adam.  When ending her letters she always says, "Love Adam" or "Love (whoever she's writing it to)," I guess saying she loves them.  So even though I write it correctly, I always have to say that she did it.  I love her fun drawings, and that pretty much every sentence is "I love . . ." and "I like . . ."

Sam at Aspen Ridge

While I seem to be on a roll...

This summer we had two boys at two different scout camps.  As our family motto seems to be, why be bored?  If there is a choice that will create more chaos, we are all over it.  :)

Actually, it was a good thing.  Busy and chaotic at times, yes, but it was a really good summer for each of them.

Aspen Ridge is in a beautiful area near Preston, Idaho.

Moving Sam's bed down to his tepee.  His was the furthest left in the picture.

Settled in!

Jamie had been to Aspen Ridge for camp once, and Sam went for a day last year during family camp, but the rest of us had never been there.  So we took a bit of a walk around.

Sam with his camp

 

  While walking around the lake this little snake came out and scared Madeleine a bit.

Before we left him there, Isaac gave Sam some little "I love you and will miss you!" scratches on his hat.

My mother heart strings were pulled hard.  Looking back while driving away I could see him standing next to his tepee just watching us.  Ouch!  From there I wondered every day how he was doing.

The next weekend we got to find out since we had to pick him up and bring him home for an NYLT course he was helping to staff as a troop guide.  When we arrived, the camp staff was in a meeting, and they were on their way to being a team.

Camp Director Kevin

Before we could steal him, they took off for staff pictures.

 No one is looking but Sammy.

Double Top - Aspen Ridge's big hike.  On Wednesdays they wake up at 4 am and start the hike at 4:30 am if their troop wants to do it.  Sam said he did it 5 times during the summer.

The tepee was a lot fuller with all 5 guys settled in.

Sam had all his stuff entirely packed.  When I walked in and saw that, I was nervous that he was going to bring everything home and not want to go back, so I made sure we only packed up what he needed.  :)

We had Sam take us up to his area - Handicraft.  Erin thought this was pretty cool.

Sam pointing where he wrote his name, but later some people painted the area, so all the names are covered now (though I'm guessing the handicraft staff found some inconspicuous areas to scratch them in again).

We love writing letters to our boys at camp.  It was always fun writing out Madeleine's letters while she dictated to me.  I had to take a picture of this one.

Another Park Day - Purely Teton

This cool bison watches over Driggs.

Today we headed into Teton for the day.  Adam really wanted to hear elk bugling, and this is the first time we've been up there at the right time for that.  Talking to a ranger, he said we were there at pretty much peak time of the year, but they don't really get going until about 7:55 pm, but from there they go like mad till about 2 am.  Unfortunately, we had about a 5 hour drive home, so leaving at 8 pm wasn't really in the cards.  Still, we were hopeful.

We took a drive out past Mormon Row and found a big herd of antelope.  We watched them for quite a while and Adam got pictures through his binoculars.

At the visitor center at Moose Junction.

We decided to try out this trail.  It was 1.7 from the trailhead to a fork in the trail, so we decided to go to the fork and come back.  Adam said he heard an elk bugle off in the distance when he first walked over to check out the trail sign and we were still gathering up.

A bit into the trail we saw some small bear tracks.  I figured we were noisy enough that it wouldn't be a problem.

It really was a beautiful trail!  I'm glad we chose it.

Adam found this bit of what we think is elk fur.

Several really big boulders along the trail.

Had to take a picture of a boulder with our rock lover.

Beautiful Teton view

And another

Isaac really liked scratching at this tree when we stopped for a few minutes.

At one point we heard it - an elk bugling!  WOW.  Adam pulled out his elk calls and tried to get it to talk back some more but it didn't work.  Still, I want to hear that again someday.  Adam's elk videos have gotten to me.  Such an amazing sound.

What a great sister - Erin gave Carolyn a lift for a bit.

Finally up to the fork!  It took us a while.  Madeleine's little legs have been worked a lot the past several days.

At the fork Jamie stepped off the trail and around a boulder and discovered a deer.  We watched it for a bit and took pictures.  Made us wonder how many other things were just off the trail.

Headed back down!  In the interest of time, instead of stopping again and again to encourage Madeleine, I asked Sam if he would carry her.  What a great brother - he packed her down the rest of the way.

By the time we got back to the car we needed to get on our way towards home, but he decided we couldn't leave without seeing Jenny Lake.  I was beat from packing Isaac on the hike and he was sleeping anyway, so I stayed in the car with him.  These are my two Jenny Lake pictures.  :)

I must note - we've been playing the license plate game for a few years now, trying to find all the US states in alphabetical order.  Going into this trip we were on Delaware, and were confident - it's a national park after all - that we would get a lot further in the game.  Early on in the trip I wrote down all 50 states to see how many total we could get.  I'm proud to say that we found 49 states!  The only we didn't see?  Delaware.  ARGH!  We were even googling it so we knew what it would look like.  The last three we needed were Kentucky, Arkansas, and Delaware, so we even got states like Connecticut and Rhode Island before then.  We are already talking about driving around Salt Lake City during general conference.  Hopefully there are some religious people that live in Delaware, but apparently they don't like to travel, so maybe we'll still be out of luck.

Driving back through Jackson headed home, Jamie happened to spot Heidi's Brooklyn Deli and about crashed the car trying to get it to.  Do you know I'm married to a food guy?  He's only seen Heidi's in the Denver Airport, and looks forward to eating there every time.  We had planned on eating sandwichy stuff that we brought pre-trip for dinner, but that plan was lost.  It was definitely delicious, even though I had to wolf mine down to change a diaper blowout.

Driving home we had two deer try to commit suicide, but we didn't let them.  We barely missed one smaller one that headed right in front of the van, and another was stopped in the middle of the road then decided to go just as we were passing it.  Somehow we missed her too.

Happy to be home as always, but I already miss it again!

And now to clean out the van...