GUEST POST! - The man of the house...

The brothers camp, which some refer to as  the men to boys camp, took place June 12-14 this year at the Needles District of Canyonlands National Park.  Those not able to attend were Bryon, Trent and Russell.  This was the first year that we had a basecamp and didn't back-pack in.  Our camp was conveniently 5 feet from the road and the bathrooms were clean and had superflush toilets.  Dev didn't have to hold it the whole 3 days!!  Car camping allowed us to have better meals with real meat and eggs and pancakes even.  The first night we took a little hike at dusk and saw the sunset  and threw rocks into little holes in the sandstone.  Then we threw big rocks into pools of water 30 feet below.  Then we realized we weren't at all different from hyper Deacons.  Der started it all.

After a cool night, we had a good  breakfast and set out for Chesler Park, in the middle of the needle formations.  It was supposed to be 10 miles round trip.  We missed a fork in the trail and found a off-duty ranger volunteer and swallowed our pride as we looked at her map.  She gave us directions and after lunch we got to our destination.  I had heard of a joint in the rock a little bit further on and spurred the lads on for more adventure.  I found out later none were too happy to be pushed further.  But they did think the joint was cool-- it was about 200 yards of shoulder width slot canyon.  We ate lunch down there in the shade.  Well, after cooling our feet and eating, we set off back to camp.  The heat wasn't too bad, but there was no shade and we were beginning to run out of water.  Der, Devin, and Leon set pretty good paces of more than 3 miles an hour.  When I saw a glimpse of our camp finally, I started running- desperate for a drink of warm water.  All in all, we hiked 16 miles instead of 10 and climbed several Anasazi welded ladders, went over steep passes and scrambled up lots of steep sandstone.  This wasn't no ADA accessible park.  Dad was kind of glad he stayed at camp reading and relaxing.  The next day, we packed up and those that had bikes went on a trail near Moab that had some of the famous slickrock features.  We lucked out with cooler weather, had great food and good camaraderie.  It was all worth the poor sleep, sunburns,  and sore muscles  we got in the process.

And now back to our regular mouthpiece:  That lovely breakfast would satisfy even the most picky taste buds... too bad you can't smell the cranberry/orange muffins that were surprisingly yummy even though they were fat free - yeah, it was a father's day breakfast, but I wanted some too...  It seemed appropriate after the camping weekend that all utensils and dishes should be disposable - continuing the theme through to the packaged condiments which for some reason seem to live in our refrigerator until we finally decide to toss them months later (they were all tossed yesterday).  The one person who was less than pleased with the lovely spread would have been dear M...   
Apparently a special breakfast isn't special without Toaster Strudel - so we had to make two (one for dad - one for her) and deliver it with a happy face... hmmm, someone forgot their happy face.  

We won't admit to the rest of father's day - most of it was taken up by stake conference anyway - and if Q ever tries to tell anyone that I slept through the entire day leaving him to his own devices I'll just point out that I did wake up and compliment him one his wonderfully prepared steak dinner!

Had to throw that in - there's the happy face!  This was our FHE for the day - Rice Krispie sculpturing... Q outdid everyone with his edible shark, and my duck attempt looked decidedly like a decoy...  oh well, they all ended up looking about the same after the eating frenzy began!

The original plan for FHE tonight was fishing - but we figured it was too hot for fish to be swimming near the boiling surface - so we opted for something the didn't require leaving the house (unless you count the quick trip to Albertson's for marshmallows and Crisped Rice Cereal)