More Scout camp

Isaac and his friend Edward paddled their canoe 3 miles to the upper end of New Fork Lake and spent the night on the ground with just their sleeping bag.  I left that night so I didn't get to do this with them.(I guess it rained all night, but they made it until morning)

Isaac's first scout camp June 2013

I took Isaac to scout camp last June.  The camp is New Forks Lake camp.  It is located in the Wind Rivers with the closest town being Pinedale, Wyoming.  I spent 2 nights there with him to make sure he would be okay. 
The troop arrived there a day early, so we took a hike to the headwaters of the Green River in the Wind Rivers. The lake is beautiful, and also there is a great view of square top mountain.  I have wanted to see that view ever since I moved to Wyoming 6 years ago.

Family Green River Summer 2013

I was backing up my camera and found some pictures from this year.  I didn't realize that I had not posted them, so I will put some on the blog.
We did our second annual trip to the Green River and the weather was not a good as we had hoped.  We spent one of the days in Vernal at the dinosaur museum because of the rain.   We did however have a couple of floats down the river and all three kids caught their own fish.

Wind Rivers

The highest lake in the basin had the best fishing for us.  I named it cutthroat lake, because it was the only lake that contained this trout.  While we were fishing, we kept a fish for lunch, but after knocking it on the head, it swam 20 feet from the bank, but and then died.  I didn't want to see it go to waste, so I swam out and got it.  The water was very cold to say the least, but I did need a bath.

Wind Rivers

We had a great time in the Wind River mountains last week.  The group included my friend from high school, Danny, and his 8 year old son Luke and my son Isaac, age 12.

We picked a trail out of Lander, Wyoming.  It was 8.5 miles into Stough Creek basin, with 2100 feet gain.  It was described in my hiking book as moderately strenuous, and I would agree.   This basin has 30 lakes and ponds.  They never named any of the lakes in fact.  I forgot my map, so it was fun exploring the basin and finding different lakes.  In fact, we caught fish in 9 different bodies of water, not including the streams.  We spent 4 nights and had a great time.  We experienced one bad day of weather with 4 hours of rain and hail and lighting hitting all around us, other than that the bugs were not bad and the fishing was really good.  Isaac caught many fish, and he doesn't even like to fish.  We ate fresh brook trout everyday for lunch.  We rarely saw people, even though they were scattered throughout the basin. 

Wind Rivers

 

 

 

 

Encampment River Wilderness

The girls and I went backpacking in the Encampment River wilderness a few weeks ago.  We hiked up the trail, which follows the river, until we found a nice spot to spend the night.  The temperature was warmer than I thought it would be,  reaching the 80s, so after we set up camp, we played in the water to cool off and I caught several brown trout. 
After seeing bear sign on the hike in, I made sure to hang our food 100 yards away from camp.  We had several deer hanging around camp at night and they did not seem afraid of us. 
The rain hit right at bedtime and we experienced a lot of heavy rain and lighting.  This made for a very wet morning, but the girls still had a great time.