the Mulf herd: Oh, the wood needs to be dry to start a fire?

You know that old mantra, "Utah: The best snow on Earth"...?

well to that, I would add, "and in the summer, those mountains can show a pretty dayung good time as well!"

Seriously though.

Every time I go into the mountains, whether it be a hike, or a camping trip, or a Sunday drive through the trees, I wonder to myself

WHY do I not spend more of my time here???

The mountains are bliss. Pure bliss.

So once the idea of a spur-of-the-moment camping trip up at Bear Lake found itself in my complicated brain, I knew there was no turning back.

The decision was made.

And convincing the husband wasn't all that hard either...

Have you met Jake? Ha.

Next thing we knew, we were here.

That's how spontaneity happens.

You're thinking it, and next thing you know, you're there.

I love it.

We started off our trip with a walk around Tony Grove Lake.

Beautiful!

The rest of the night was somewhat of a funny joke.

We found the campsite and all that,

(Don't mind the fact that our sleeping bags live at our parents' house at this moment in time)

which was pretty uneventful, but then it came time to make a fire.

Oh, that fire.

Here, let me draw a picture for you...

Man + wife ~~plan out~~ ~~details~~ of camping trip.

Man + wife buy wet firewood.

The end.

Literally though.

That was the end.

As in, the fire WOULD. NOT. START.

And I'm almost positive I heard the expert with the blazing flames in the campsite next to us, grumbling to his wife something about "the idiocy of that young couple... what are they doing?!"

Okay, maybe it was the wind.

But if he hadn't already been thinking it,

there's no doubt that those thoughts crossed his mind

after the girl with a necklace, curly hair and sandals

(remember how we were camping?)

walked over and timidly asked,

"Ummm... sir? Do you have any kindling we can ummm.. borrow?"

He informed me that it was my lucky day, because he was just about to throw away the last of the paper he had brought. (He was so prepared, he had packed EXTRA! You know you can always trust the ones with the 1960 campers...)

Ahh yeahhh.

Well after burning right through that, without as much as a spark of a good flame, (thanks anyway, dude!) we turned to nature. That was also a funny joke, as it had rained the night before (hence the wet firewood). But we were not giving up!

I blindly (Jake had our one and only flashlight) made my way through the trees, feeling around for sticks that were even the slightest bit dry.

A little while later,

we joined up to show each other what we'd found.

You can imagine the scene of our efforts if I tell you that this event was followed by an, "umm... maybe we could look in the car to see what we can find in there...?"

Unfortunately, the old cardboard box, the easter basket ready to go to the D.I., the Wendy's bag and the handful of shopping and to-do lists didn't quite cut it, either.

At this point, I'm positive the man next-door was watching us, because he came over and offered yet another thing he'd thought to pack.

"That fire still won't start for you, huh? (That's a nice way of putting it.) Well here... I've got this extra candle you can have...good luck."

A candle. We really must have looked dumb.

Eventually a few flames started, and we really gave it a good effort to enjoy our so-called "fire," but something about the fact that I sat shivering, with thick clouds of billowy smoke blowing in my face made this experience less than enjoyable.

Hmm.

In my opinion, taking ridiculous,

but oh-so-necessary cheesy tent pictures is way more fun.