I loaded up the kiddos the first week of June and drove up to Star Valley, Wyoming to visit Brandi's family and let the kids play with their cousins. We took the camper up this year since we were staying almost 2 weeks. The kids had a blast playing with their Hodges cousins, and I had fun hanging out with Brandi's parents, Boone and Laura, and Mark and Liz. I'm not including too many photos here (because I didn't take many while up there), but I will post a lot of photos from our backpacking trip to the Green River Lakes in the Wind Rivers while we were up there. I took a ton of photos on that hike.
Annie got to hang out with Grandma Hodges and learned how to bake strawberry rhubarb pie.
The first day up there, Grandpa Hodges was cutting up a ram he had just put down, and he let me put down the ewe, which he then butchered. I used my .22 pistol to shoot the ewe in the head. I've never shot an animal from close range like that, and I thought it would bother me, but it didn't. I suppose knowing it was going to be used to feed the fam took the edge off. I held the gun right to the ewe's head, and it just dropped to the ground. Less dramatic than shooting a deer or elk from long range.
I was looking for bear, and Boone was looking for bugs on the ground or something. Boone had his bear bait up on the wooded ridge above their property, and we went up to watch it one evening. I took my rifle up on the trip just in case I could buy a tag, but they closed the hunts a couple of days before I arrived because quotas had been filled.
First cutthroat of the year out of the Snake River while fishing with Emmy and Grandpa Hodges.
Emmy fishing the Snake River with me and Grandpa.
James wakes up every night with a bloody nose (or so it seems), and this morning he had smeared it all over his face, his arms, and the camper wall.
The ewe ready to be skinned. Brandi's parents, grandparents, brother, and various uncles live on what was her great-grandparent's old original 160 acre homestead.
The rascals tired and sleeping because I woke them up at 4am to drive home to Moab.
