Wednesday, July 8, 2009

Bateman Family Camping Trip 2009

As promised... pictures are now included.

So a couple weeks ago we packed up all our gear and headed to Heber to camp for a week with the (almost) whole Bateman Family. (We missed you Mike!) To say it short and sweet: It was a blast!

We set up camp with 4 tents, plus 1 cabin.
Marie, Manoj, and their cute girls, Misha and Maddie, came down from Portland.
Jen and Braxton from Denver.
Christy, James and puppy Cooper came in late Monday night. (Or was it early Tuesday morning? I was sleeping.)
And Mom and Dad came from Denver.
We met up in Provo, loaded everything up, and drove the long 45 minutes to our camp site. After getting everything set up, we had a great time enjoying each other's company and, of course, playing Phase 10.

Here's what we did to fill the time during the week.
  • Floated the Provo River. So beautiful, and so fun. NOT so relaxing. (Sorry about your lost hat and flip flop James!) Mom and Dad went with the grandkids on the raft... with a guide... apparently that was relaxing. They didn't even have to paddle! The rest of us went down on tubes. It's a little more work than just floating. You have to use your arms to stay away from things like bushes, giant rocks, and dangerous bridges. Plus the water is about 10 degrees, so the more you paddle, the more your hands turn numb, and the more your skin on your arms disappears from rubbing against the tube. No really, it's a blast. It really is!

  • Boating! This was the most fun, at least for me! It brought back all the fun memories of boating on the Snake and Columbia Rivers. We rented a boat for one afternoon on the Jordanelle Reservoir. We also rented one of those water trampolines that are on top of a tube, for the ones who weren't on the boat. We tubed the whole afternoon, making sure that we switched out people who were on the tramp. And with just a few set-backs (popping the first tube, and thinking we could climb back on the tramp without a ladder, for example) we had a great time!
  • Jeff and Braxton on the tube.

    Here's the water trampoline. It was really fun.

  • Park City. We spent one day here doing all the fun summer stuff that they have to offer. We had a few people ride the zip-line, which is not as thrilling as it may seem. Everyone rode down on the Alpine Slides, which are pretty fun. And we all LOVED the Alpine Coaster. For those of you that may be thinking about spending a day in Park City, this is where you need to spend your money. The Alpine Coaster is by far the best. You sit in your seat at the bottom of the hill. You ride all the way to the top, enjoying the beautiful views around you, then when you get to the top, you ride the twists and turns down the track back to the bottom. The best part is you are in control of your speed. You have handles that you push forward to go fast and pull back to slow down. It's a ton of fun. But if you think that you could ride it with your brand new iPhone in your pocket and still have it when you get to bottom, you'd be wrong. (Sorry Marie!) All in all, it was a fun day.



Cousins!

I have the cutest neices and nephew ever!

After all that fun, we couldn't last another day of camping. Since we were so tired from all the fun, we decided to come back to Provo a day early. (Or maybe it was the rainstorm that hit us Thursday night.) Thanks Mom and Dad for planning the fun trip! Let's do it again sometime!