Lava Hot Spring + Park City = Fun

This year we kind of took a different kind of summer vacation. 

Jeron got it in his head that it would be great to go camping.
He hooked things up with his buddy Tyler and planned the whole thing.

Then he started to worry about Ellie and camping for too long.

He decided we would camp and then head to Park City for some R and R.

This sounded like a great plan to me.

Lava was a ton of fun.
We went with a family in our neighborhood, the Singley's
(Jeron's BFF or brother from another mother as I refer to them)
They were a lot of fun and their kids were great.
The oldest helped out with the girls and the son and JJ did everything together.

Our camp site was right by one of the natural hot springs

the water park was just across the bridge

and the river was right there.

We pulled up and I took one look at the river and started to panic.

We were going to have to be on HIGH alert with Elsie and Ellie the whole time.

Both of the girls were actually very timid around the water so this took off a lot of the pressure.

Ellie wouldn't even step foot near it.  

With her we just had to mostly worry about disappearing to see other campsites.  

Always the social bug.
People have asked me if the camp site was trashy.
It is camping is all I can come up with.
But if that Semi Truck Cab is any indication of "trashy" well there you have it.
I had to laugh at that.  Who goes camping in their Cab???
Sure enough though it was parked there as a camper.
Hey, if it works it works.

The bridge that was right by our campsite became a hot spot for us.

First there was the hot spring right by our campsite just across the bridge.

We spent hours in that warm water.

Ellie sat on the bridge a good portion of the time playing barbies and watching other tubers go down the river.

We tied a rope to the bridge and used it to stop us from swiftly drifting down the river.

It was so much fun.  We would hike up about 200 yards and then get in the river and aim for the rope.

Lift our legs and let the water swiftly carry us down the river.

Grab the rope and pull ourselves out of the swift current onto shore. 

All of us did this countless times.(minus the littles of course.)

JJ and Emma couldn't get enough of this.

We went tubing twice down the river which was a ton of fun minus Ellie and Elsie crying their eyes out.

We went to the swimming pool with five water slides and Olympic size diving boards.

We went to the lava hot springs pools.

We ate tin foil dinners, and sloppy joes at our camp site.

We roasted marshmellows.

We lived in our swimming suits the whole time.

Ellie started throwing her barbies into the river to see the river sweep them away.

We only lost one, and quickly replaced her barbies with gold fish crackers.

On the first night when I was getting Elsie to sleep in the tent she said to me

"Mom, this is the best day ever."

That made my trip.

When it was time to leave we were sad to go.

I am pretty sure that means it was a good trip.

We went home, dropped off our things, and headed to Park City.

Roger was nice enough to get a room at the Sundial at The Canyons.

We went shopping at the outlets, ate Park City Pizza mmmmm, hung out at the hotel, Jeff and Tara came up with baby McEuan.  We watched a lot of Shark Week on TV, and we swam.  The weather was unseasonable cool.  In fact while we were at Park City Pizza there was a flash flood.  It was insane.

McEuan had his first blow out and Tara looked like a pro cleaning it up.

Such a cutie.

It was crazy weather but we didn't want to miss swimming.

So even though it was chilly out side the kids and Jeron went swimming.

I sat there and read my book...ahhhh

It was a great trip and Dad did a good job planning it. 

I hope we do it again.