Tuesday, July 27, 2010

Dark Canyon Lake

We took the kids camping up in the La Sal Mountains here in Moab. We went up to Dark Canyon Lake. It turned out to be the trip that was cursed, even though we had fun and it was beautiful. On the bumpy ride up over Geyser pass, the ice chest worked its way off the rope and dumped out of the truck onto the logging road crushing 11 out of 18 of our eggs and dumping food everywhere. We picked up the remnants, and Brandi cleaned and saved what we could while I set up camp. The first night went off great besides some rain that night, but we all stayed dry. We had breakfast and canoed the lake and fished the next morning. Then the hail storm from hell arrived.

Here is a picture of the camp when we arrived before the hail storm turned it into a muddy pond.
Here is a picture of the camp after the hail storm turned it into a pond. It took me an hour to get the truck out of the that pond. The sides were just steep enough and totally slick that I couldn't get out. After turning it into a mud pit and cutting and laying down a bunch of pine boughs, we got out. Everything was covered in mud.
We slipped into the back of the truck to wait out what we thought would be a routine rain storm. Here's a pic from the back looking out.
James laid out all of his toys to wait out the storm.
The hail slowly built until they were nearly marble size. There were piles of hail about 4 inches deep everywhere.
It rained so hard, that half our camp was submerged in 12 inches of water. The tent and tubs were floating in the water.
Matt grubbing his skillet fried pancake.
James and Matt drinking up their hot chocolate first thing in the morning.
Pretty girl relaxing while Joe cooks.
Joe cooking bacon and pancakes over the fire in the iron skillet.
Canoeing with the kids. The hail storm is rolling in over the mountains.
Using Bryan's supersized flapjacker to make pancakes.
Emmy was the only one to catch a fish. She pan fried it when we got home and ate it up with lemon juice.

4 comments:

Bryan & Bobbie said...

You should have made a shelter with the pancake flipper.

It is so beautiful up there. It looks like you guys had a lot of fun. Way to go Emmy on catching the fish.

Mother of Eight said...

Crazy and exciting! Looks like lots of fun!

The Real Jim Heywood said...

Remember when we tent camped at Joshua Tree National Park and had the windstorm from hell?

joeheywood said...

That sucked. Sleeping in the van was cool, though.