Camping at Rock Cliff

On Tuesday we loaded up our car and headed up to the Rock Cliff campground. It is just East of the Jordanelle. We really had to LOAD up our car. I think the girls hardly had room to breath and I was just praying that our trunk wouldn't pop open. Of course we had the canoe on the top of the car too. You can see why they call it Rock Cliff. This was our view from the campground.

When we got there it was too late to do too many activities so we set up our site and started dinner.

We cooked all of our dinners over the camp fire. These hobo dinners were super easy. We used hamburger patties and tater tots instead of the traditional meat and potatos. It made the cooking process so much quicker.
After dinner we enjoyed marvelous SMORES! I don't know if there is anything better than yummy smores around a campfire.
Lydia with her sticky smile!

I love Wes' face here! Priceless! There were a lot of animals were we stayed. I have never seen so many wild animals in my life in such a short period of time. We saw three deer, a beaver, potguts, chipmunks, hummingbirds, swallows, and two raccoons.
This little raccoon was quite a menace to us. He is very cute, but very mischievous. The ranger warned us before we came up that we would need to put our food in totes and secure them with cords so the raccoons wouldn't get into them. No problem we thought.
The first night we were there Wes and I were peacefully sleeping when we suddenly hear this really loud noise. It was 2:00 AM! This little baby raccoon had decided that he wanted our food so badly that he pushed it off the bench onto the concrete pad. I don't know if he was hoping to break it open. Well you would think that such a loud noise would scare him away, but no, he just kept hanging around trying to scratch his way into our food. He would get pretty close to us as well. We ended up having to drive our car up to our site, which is completely against the rules and loading up all of the food totes so we could sleep. After everything was put in the car we could hear something roaming around Wes' side of the tent. It was a little creepy. This little guy ended up being a little bit of a nuisance the whole time. Wes ending up pushing him away with his foot which seemed to frighten this little creature, but we sill found him roaming around even in the broad daylight.


Our first night there we explored the site and went on a walk.

The camp was located right near the Jordanelle. I really like this picture that Wes took of the girls and I.

That first night we even stayed up a little late to look at all of the stars. We even saw a few satellites and one shooting star. We all made a wish!
The second day we went canoeing and fishing on the Jordanelle for a few hours during the heat of the day. We even bought some worms at a little local store. Putting worms on a hook is a very interesting experience. I actually felt a little bad for the worms. Perhaps it is because I have always liked bugs. They actually tense up and start thrashing about when you stick them. I'm sure you've always want to know that!
We unfortunately didn't catch a thing! Lydia says she got a few bites, but I am not sure about that. Maybe it is a good thing that we didn't catch anything because we just would have had to gut the fish too. You know though, I have always wanted to try really FRESH fish. Maybe someday! At least we had some great views on the lake.
Even though we didn't have any luck fishing on the lake we thought we might try to do a little bit of fishing in the Provo river with lures. The river was probably too shallow and when we were casting we ended up catching some interesting things. My line got stock under a rock, in a buried stick and I cast once and caught the bridge. Yes that is right...a bridge!! Lydia helped unhook me. Lydia and Wes also caught the other side of the shore. Aren't we fancy fishers!
Thank heavens that Wes knew how to quickly get our poles ready to go again.

We decided to come home a day early so we wouldn't be too tired to do the show on Friday night. I think it was a really good decision. Lydia actually woke up at 2:00 AM on our last night (it appears to be our witching hour) and she was was very sick. She was throwing up. We got things cleaned up and went back to bed. The next morning we had to lug stuff all the way to the parking lot to get our car loaded up. The campsite doesn't allow you to drive to your site. Instead you are allowed to use carts to transport your things. There was a cart available when we arrived, but we never saw a single cart the whole rest of our stay. It made us pretty tired.

What is it about camping that can wear you out so much? It is great to be in nature, but nature can sure take a beating out of you. We were great food to the mosquitos and at times we still find ourselves itching. We even used bug spray. I also ended up being really allergic to something there and my nose was just sneezing and running like crazy.

Despite everything, I am glad that we went. It is something we will always have to remember and besides it just helped me appreciate home even more!