Sunday, September 20, 2009

Camping

We decided to return to the White Mountains and camp beside the White River once again. This young cow was walking down the middle of the dirt road and came head to head with us. I guess we looked bigger because he got off the road first. As we passed a few others Victoria noticed that their ears were tagged and blurted out "Hey, they're on sale!" That's my girl. She knows a good deal when she sees one.
Daphne's favorite animal in the whole world! A wooly caterpillar! The boys found about 10 of them all over the ground next to the river. Daphne hates caterpillars but she did come close enough to see atleast one at a distance. So now we need to find out what kind of caterpillars these are. The perfect place to hang out and read a book at sunset. (Daphne took this picture) Oil and water...oh wait, it's Daphne and Kaleb! What a nice big sister. She already carried Victoria and went back to help her little brother across. Here are the other two peas in a pod. They were having a little chat with each other on the other side. It was cute. The kids were using large pieces of bark as boats and sending them down the river. Water is always so fascinating. I never get tired of watching water. Here is Victoria telling me all about her "bark boat". She is always so animated when she talks. It reminds me of Jared when he was her age. The more he moved the more he told me. Ahhh, the colors of Fall. It was clear all morning and rained with thunder for about 15-20 minutes. Not too bad. Well, a half an hour later it started to pour buckets of water! No problem, we're dry under the awning. We are well known for going camping in a tent and end up in a down pour. That's why we got the tent trailer. We were tired of our sleeping bags floating in the tent. So no worries now, we are in the trailer. Still coming down! Now things are starting to really get saturated! There are standing puddles everywhere. We decided that after two hours of rain that we were going to pack it up and go home as soon as it let up. The clouds were looking way too dark, thunder and lightning all over. It is our experience that when it rains this much it isn't going to let up. Sure enough it let up long enough to pile everything sopping wet into the back of the van in trash bags. We almost got stuck in the mud trying to drive out of our campsite. It brought back alot of jeeping memories from when I was a little girl. We got a little nervous when we we started to slide around but managed to get enough traction and made it out. For the next few hours you could see that it had either rained heavily or was raining. The trailer electrical plug had jiggled out of the socket on the dirt road and dragged on the asphalt and disintegrated it. We knew that it was going to be dark by the time we made it home so we were thankful to see an Autozone on the way out of Showlow. We were lucky that all of the main wiring was intact and not ruined in any way. By the time Kirk was done with it, it was as good as new.(Okay, wait, this is the before picture!) As we were coming down off the rim the clouds were amazeing. This is the best I could get.

2 comments:

Katherine said...

Camping! I can't believe I didn't get in camping in this summer. We always went camping up at the Jedidiah Smith River growing up and I loved it. I loved swimming in the river and going tubing. Daphne you have an eye for nature, I love the pictures you took. I am with you Pam, it's a wonderful moment to witness our children serving one another occasionally. I love those caterpillars, I haven't seen one for so long. I always would rub my finger along their backs. That is funny about the cow for sale. The other day while delivering mail I had to wait for 2 cows and a calf to cross the road, I loved it.

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