family camping trip

[by jen]

This past weekend, we loaded up the team vehicle and headed up to the mountains for a little camping trip. We were about 2 1/2 hours south of our city and gained about 6,000 feet. Here we are unloading. To say Ella was excited would be an understatement...

Showing off our bonfire...

Hot dogs for supper...

The next morning Ella woke up very excited about our "big day", as she called it.

The overnight temps were VERY cold, maybe in the 40's, but the kids were good and toasty thanks to Gma Carol for making these great sleeping bags for winter (and mountain camping trips). Yes, Silas' is pink. Poor boy gets pink hand-me-downs!
Breakfast time: eggs and sausage (mutton, of course).

We had this beautiful rock as the backdrop of our campsite. This was freshly fallen snow, as you will notice in the later pictures, it melts during our stay.


On Saturday, our "big day", we went on a hike up to get a better view of our snow-capped mountain. On the way Ella found some interesting things. Here is what we assume to be a donkey's jawbone. Ella was quite concerned. She said, "Poor donkey, he lost his teeth."

Then we found this..."Poor cow, he lost his head!"

On our way up. The kids sure had it easy...


Looking down to the campsite. If you look close you can see a black dot and green dot in the clearing. That's our tent and truck.


While we were camping, the only other life we saw were these sheep and the occasional shepherd passing by. I told Aaron it was such a shame that there aren't places in America like this where you can pull up wherever you want to camp, have a gorgeous campsite like this and not see any other people. We will certainly take advantage of this while we can!
Family photo ops...



Descending...
Our campsite...



Saturday was fairly warm, so you can see how much snow melted that day...

Here Ellie is pretending to be a shepherd...

Silas happy to sit, play, and enjoy the scenery...

One of the shepherds we met...

To get to our site, we had to drive through a couple of rivers. We were glad for the 4 wheel drive.

You might be wondering how the photographer then got across the river; here's how...

And here is one of the shepherd's settlements. These folks come here from the villages for the summer to watch all the sheep, goats, and cows in the village, as there is not grass left down in the valley. Most shepherds have up to 1,000 head of livestock to be responsible for.

We had a GREAT time and look forward to our next camping trip!