Snow Goose Festival

We made the trip down to the Delta Snow Goose Festival again this year. We're slowly starting to do things with other people again as in our whole family drove down together in the van but when we were out of the van we were around other birders from Utah County Birders.

Jet slept through most of it. He woke up in time to say goodbye to another birding buddy who is less than a year younger than he is and goes out birding soooooo much with his mom and grandma. I wouldn't mind getting out more with Jet again.

 

We drove home by way of driving around West Mountain. It was pleasant until some of the kids had had enough of the trip and started fighting. I made them get out and do jumping jacks to get out some of that excess energy that they were using for fighting. I'll have to remember that for next time. We did see a beautiful ferruginous hawk, some bald eagles, and plenty of other birds.

 

It felt so good to take up this tradition again of going to the snow goose festival around Jeremy's birthday. We didn't bring a big chocolate cake to share this year but when we got home, we did have Jeremy's birthday dinner and I did make him a chocolate cake. 

 

Then he opened his cards and his birthday present and saw the book he knew he was getting then saw the bookmark (Utah State Parks Pass) he didn't know he was getting. He was very happy about that extra surprise. He's happy to let me use it, too, since we're both planning on doing more birding this year.

I think Jeremy was pleased with how we celebrated his birthday this year.

Fall Break- Goblins, Ghosts, and Skeletons

For years, we've made trips to Arches National Park.  Every time we head down there, we've commented how some time we'd like to go to Goblin Valley State Park.  Jeremy and I love the movie, Galaxy Quest.  Parts of that movie were filmed in Goblin Valley.  That was part of the appeal for going to visit- to see the rock formations that were in that movie.
This year, since Jeremy has a Utah State Parks pass, we decided we were going to make the trip to Goblin Valley.  We planned for months to go during Fall Break... and we did.
Like our trip to Zion National Park during Spring Break, we got the kids up really early in the morning.  We expected a 4-5 hour drive, but it only took us 3 1/2 hours, so we were there nice and early (but not too early because we also didn't get out as early as we originally planned).  We spent some time at the Visitor's Center then went hiking among the formations.

It was so cool.  It was rocks.  Lots and lots of rocks.  Joshua said, "It rocked."  And the kids had a good time.

We found lots of little paths through and on rocks.  We went through what looked like a maze of rocks.  Some of the area we walked along reminded me of sand dunes, but you wouldn't want to run or jump down them since they were solid.

The night before, we showed the kids the scene in Galaxy Quest filmed in Goblin Valley, so while we were there, they got up to an area where they could cheer, "Gorignak!  Gorignak!" like in the movie.  Those kids are so cute.

After hiking, we had a nice lunch at the viewpoint overlooking the rock formations.

It was such a neat place, we really want to go back and visit again.
We joked how this was like a Halloween-themed trip since we were going to a place called "Goblin Valley" and we were listening to Fablehaven on CD, parts of the book with goblins.  We even saw a rock formation that looked like a witch's face, complete with pointed nose and chin.

Since we did get such an early start (which included good parking), we got an early start back home as well.  We went a roundabout way when we left the park to try to get some birding in.  We will not be going that way again.  Sigh.  We didn't get a lot of birds and it added way too much time to the return trip.
On the bright side, we were able to continue with our Halloween-themed trip.  Since we were on a different road, we were able to stop at a place called "Ghost Rock."  The rock was okay, but the view across the road was gorgeous.

As we were driving, we also saw some interesting vehicles.  We passed a truck carrying trailers filled with pumpkins.

We also passed a van with bikes on the back.  Sitting on one of the bikes was a skeleton.  Ha Ha Ha.  It was awesome.

It was a really good trip and I'm glad we had this family time together.

Camping in the Sun and Rain

It looks like I never blogged about camping as a family last year.  Well, we did, and the time before that was when I was pregnant with Jr. Jr. so you see, it had been a while.
This year, we made sure to go camping again, especially since one of Jr.'s requirements for cub scouts is to go on an overnight campout... and because we wanted to.  It was fun.

We went to Jordanelle State Park- Jordanelle Reservoir.  The kids were all helpful throughout (except for the times they weren't). 

We had a beautiful campsite with lots of trees (read: lots of birds).  There were various other critters who visited us from time to time as well.

It was somewhat warm when we got there, then cooled off a bit during the evening. 
We had fun playing games in the tent (the kids loved Uno) and Jeremy told us half a Jackerina story, "Jackerina and the Chickadees of Terror."

It rained most of the night and next morning (good thing we put the rain fly up when we set up the tent- ask me about last year's adventure).  We were flexible however and changed some meals around since we wouldn't light a fire in the rain.  Even though we did have the rain fly up, some things in our tent still got wet.  Oh well.  All part of the adventure, right?

We went for a drive while the weather was as it was and found some marmots, a cute weasel, and many birds, including bobolinks.  We got a much better view of them this year than the one we saw from quite a distance last year.

The bobolinks were also being quite vocal.  They make some interesting sounds to go along with their interesting look.   

Click on the picture to see it larger.

When we got back to the campground, it had dried out a bit, so after lunch we went down to the reservoir because the kids wanted to learn how to skip rocks.  There was some skipping and some rock (and log/stick) throwing and it was fun.

 
We had another good evening.  The day before, the kids explored around our campsite and found some secret passages through the trees and a sandpit where they enjoyed much drawing with sticks.
Jr. was tired enough that by the time we finished that day, we didn't play any card games and he was asleep while Jeremy finished the Jackerina story.

The next morning we packed up and left the campground. 

We drove around the reservoir to another section of the state park.  Another of Jr.'s cub scout requirements is to go on a 1-mile hike or walk and note animal signs.  That was very easy for him since as soon as we got out of the van he heard a cicada buzzing, saw leaves that had been chewed by some bug, heard and saw several birds, and we all got bitten by mosquitoes.  It was still a nice hike/walk, but there were some areas that we couldn't go to because the river was so high.

 Then we headed home.

Now to talk about food.  Several people on facebook gave us good suggestions.  We did some experimenting and kept with some traditional camping food.  I already mentioned that we moved some meals around, so here's what we ended up with.
For dinner the first night, we had hot dogs and watermelon and grilled corn on the cob (yumm) and s'mores.

For breakfast the next morning, we ate donuts in the van.
For lunch we had quesadillas and grilled cheese sandwiches (thanks, Jr., for making the quesadillas) with carrots.

For dinner we tried out pizza (with and without foil on top) in pie tins.  I baked crust before we left so we just had to put toppings on.  Everyone got their own personal pizza.  We had salad and whatever watermelon and carrots people wanted to eat.  We also made wafflecone s'mores again.  We tried jiffy pop, but it didn't work very well for us.

For breakfast before we packed up and left we had breakfast sandwiches and hot chocolate.  We also tried pudding-filled biscuits like we did last year.  I don't think I want to try those again.  You wrap a biscuit on a stick and cook it over the campfire then fill it with pudding.  The inside of the biscuit doesn't get cooked very well, though.

Now to talk about celebrating holidays on our trip.  The day we got there was Magic Day.  We kept telling Lucky that everything we did from lighting the fire to setting up the tent was magic.
The next day was Kitchen Klutzes of America Day.  And lookee what I did.  Dropped the eggs (not intentionally).

Sigh.  Jeremy was going to cook them for breakfast the next morning, but nicely fried them up that night instead.  Sigh.  It actually made it faster the last morning when assembling and warming up breakfast sandwiches.

Speaking of the last day.  That was Pop Goes the Weasel Day.  Since we had seen that weasel the day before, Jeremy suggested we go look for it again since it was so cute.  So... Pop goes, "The weasel.  Let's go look for it."  Unfortunately we didn't see it again.  But we did see more bobolinks and marmots.

And that's about all I am going to say about our camping trip.