Third Anniversary Camping Trip

With our trip to Disneyland coming up in October, we decided not to spend a lot of money going somewhere for our anniversary, so we went camping again this year. This year we went to Aspen Grove by Strawberry (not the one by Sundance). It took us about an hour to get up there, but it was a really nice campground and actually had some trees. We always seem to forget something when we go camping. Last year it was my contact case. So on our way up to the campground, I started going through everything mentally making sure we didn't forget anything major.
By the time we'd gotten up to the campground I'd come up with cutting board, carrots, and cream of chicken soup for Hobo Dinners. So it seemed like nothing major was missing. We'd just have to live without carrots, use a plate for a cutting board, and have BBQ sauce on our Hobo Dinners instead of soup. The campground was in a small canyon and so the sun went down behind the mountain fairly early (before we even finished dinner). After dinner, I decided it was time to change from my flip flops to my tennis shoes, and that's when I realized we had forgotten our shoes! We spent the weekend in flip flops. At night I wore socks with my flip flops. It was very stylish.
Our campsite had a few trees, and was on the edge of a thicker forest. On Friday while we were waiting for our dinner to finish cooking, we heard some noises in the distance behind our campsite. It sounded like branches breaking every once in awhile. Every time it would happen, Penuche would stare out toward the forest and start sniffing in that direction, so we knew something was out there. We all just sat there very quietly looking through the trees trying to see what it was. Suddenly Josh said, "It's a deer." We could see it's white butt moving around in the trees. It turned out to be a mommy and her two babies. I walked up into the trees a little ways and got a few pictures of them. I was actually able to get pretty close to them.

On Saturday we took Penuche down to the reservoir to do some swimming, and Josh wanted to try fishing. We parked, and hiked on a trail called the Strawberry Narrows. It was about a 10 minute hike to a place called Badger Point. There was no one else on that side of the lake with us. There were people in boats, but it was nice being away from everyone else. Josh didn't catch any fish-I think mostly because Penuche wouldn't stay out of the water. He was having the time of his life! We would throw a stick out into the lake and he'd swim after it and bring it back. After doing that for about 10 or 15 minutes, he seemed tired, so we stopped. But he continued to find sticks floating out in the lake, so he'd swim out, grab it, and bring it back in to the shore. He had a pile of about 10 sticks and small logs. At one point a bunch of seagulls flew over us about 20-30 feet in the air. A couple of them dove down closer to the water (but still well out of reach). Penuche was swimming when this happened, and leapt out of the water trying to catch one. I don't know how he imagined he'd get one, but it was pretty funny to watch. He was so exhausted after swimming and hiking, but he had a lot of fun.

When we got back to camp Saturday afternoon, we were all tired and decided it was time for a nap. We all climbed into the tent and tried to get comfortable. We started to hear thunder in the distance, and then a few minutes later it started sprinkling a little. The thunder started to get closer, and closer. Then it started hailing really hard. Penuche did not like that at all! The thunder was so close by then that we would see lightning and almost instantly hear the thunder. We could feel it in the ground and Josh said he could feel it in his chest. I haven't heard thunder that loud in a very long time. It was a really good thunderstorm.
We all had a nice and relaxing weekend, and hope to get out and do it again soon.