Lords of the Flies

We had our Father-Son/Priesthood Commemoration camp out this weekend. For the last 6-out-of-8 years we've reserved a nice group site in Springville Canyon. It's a nice wooded area with pines, quakies, and a river. This year, however, a brand new group site was reserved in Spanish Fork Canyon off the Diamond Fork. It was a little more desert-ish, with red sand, pinions, cedars, and sagebrush. Luckily, because of this insanely, unseasonably cool June, everything was still green and lush. See here:


But this place was more like a parking lot with a HUGE pavilion and lots of concrete. It was built for 100+ people in mind. How prudent this place would prove to be! The night was fun. We stopped at the bottom of the canyon on Friday and ate Wendy's for dinner. I'm not much for cooking outdoors and don't have the hardware to do it. So we also took a cooler with tons of snacks and a big hogie 'sammich' for later. The boys started the fire in the HUGE fire pit all by themselves. Luckily someone brought firewood. Otherwise, we'd have been scouring the hills for hours looking for twigs-n-such. This is the boys after they lit about 10 tumbleweeds on fire at the same time:

A la Lord of the Flies.

When the boys were causing mischief and getting into trouble, I suggested they climb to the top of the mountain next to us and touch the big tree on top. I said it as a joke, but they took it seriously. This was the first group to get to the top of Everest. Two more groups followed after them, but these are the trail-blazing pioneers. They almost didn't make it back before dark:


I stayed awake until 1 AM around the campfire with the guys. All the boys were asleep by 11 PM. Bryce and his friend Travis slept in our 2-man tent, while Blake, Mitchell and I all slept in the van (removable seats are wonderful).At 5:40 AM I awoke to a pressing need to relieve myself in the weeds. After I crawled back into the van it started raining. And raining and raining, and raining. It rained non-stop until we left around 10 AM. It's a good thing we had that huge pavilion or we'd have been miserable. All in all, it was fun. Except for the major hay fever attack that turned into a cold over the weekend. Must've been some seriously noxious weeds, because they sure afflicted and tormented THIS man!