More Idaho adventures

In case you were wondering if we dropped off the face of the Earth, we kind of did! Well, the technological earth that is. Aaron, Camden and I went to Island Park to go camping with my family for a few days. We left last Thursday morning, July 24th. The intention was to be camping from Thursday through Monday. Aaron had to work on Tuesday morning, so we had to be back by then.

Well, as many of you know, we have a great airline perk. My dad worked for Delta for years and years and retired with them. So we still get the awesome travel perks. What that means is that for me, I get to fly for a reasonably low cost. The catch is, it is space available. For example, my ticket to Idaho was only $30 each way. Camden is still free because he is under two. And my brother, Brad, works for Skywest, and for our Christmas present last year, he chose Aaron as his travel companion (he can change it each year) for this year. So Aaron gets the same perk that I do, for this year anyway. So, it's a great perk, and we love it. However, the space available part of it makes for many adventures.

So, we flew into SLC on Thursday, July 24th with the intention of catching another plane into either Idaho Falls or Yellowstone. Once we got into Salt Lake, all of the flights into Idaho were oversold, so we weren't getting on anything! We forgot that the 24th of July is a big holiday in Utah, so that probably had something to do with it. So we rented a car in Salt Lake and drove up to Idaho Falls. Rather than going all the way to Island Park that night, we just stayed at my sister's in Idaho Falls, Shelley actually, and went up the following morning on Friday.

We stayed and camped through Sunday morning. Then we found out that we had to take a flight out of Salt Lake on Monday morning at 10:00. It was the only one that had room on it, with 15 seats available. My brother told us this about 9 a.m. on Sunday morning. So we packed up our stuff and headed down from the mountains with the intention of driving all the way to SLC to catch a plane the next morning. We arrived at my sister, Lara's, house in Shelley once more for a quick break. We jumped on her computer real quick to double check the flight. Wouldn't you know it? In a matter of 3 hours, those fifteen seats were gone. In fact, the flight was oversold and there were about 15 people on the stand-by list already, people like us. Every other flight that day was also oversold.

We panicked for a brief moment and wondered what to do since Aaron had a work meeting on Tuesday morning that he had to be back for. We considered taking our rental car and driving the atrocious 11 hours to Reno and paying a huge drop fee for returning the car at a different location. Neither of us could stomach that long drive, so we decided we'd still drive to Salt Lake and just stand by for flights and see what happened. Well, suddenly the keys to the rental car had disappeared. We searched for at least 2 hours. Finally, after a quick prayer, we found them behind a couch in the basement. They were in the diaper bag, so we think that Camden must have taken them and played with them and lost them. At any rate, it was well into the evening by now and we decided to just wait until the morning to drive to Salt Lake since we didn't have any chance of getting on the morning flight anyway.

So Monday morning we made it to Salt Lake. We turned in the rental car and stayed at Aaron's mom's house. We were fortunate to get on a flight early Tuesday morning that put us in to Reno at 9:00 a.m., just in time for Aaron's meeting. Whew!

So, that was the traveling adventure of the trip. You know, the trip where we were meant to be in Island Park for 4 days! Oh well, that's stand-by travel for you. I've done it my whole life and I am very used to it. One time I was stuck with my sisters in the Boston airport for 3 days waiting for a flight out.

Now the fun part of our trip. When we got to Lara's house on Thursday evening, she had a little birthday party planned for me. We bbq'd shish kabobs and Lara had made me a chocolate cake with cream cheese frosting. She also had party streamers and lots of balloons; it was so thoughtful and yummy!

The next day was Friday, the day we arrived in Island Park. We just relaxed a bit and hung out with my parents. That evening the Brunts, some family friends, joined us for a dutch oven dinner. It was nice to see them! My mom had another cake for me that night too. Jordan and Lara arrived later that evening after they got off work, and we had a campfire and roasted marshmallows.

On Saturday, Jordan & Afton woke up really early and went fishing, so Lara & Justin, and Aaron & I (we left Camden home with Grandma and Grandpa) went into West Yellowstone to play around. We went to the Grizzly and Wolf Discovery Center where the game keepers hide food
for the grizzlies, and then let them out into their little area. The grizzlies then go nuts finding the food and eating it. The wolves were neat to see too. We then went to eat lunch at one of the worst restaurants ever, but that's a whole post in itself.

We got back to camp and then went canoeing down Henry's Fork of the Snake River. It's a pretty mellow ride and something I've done many times growing up, but it is really beautiful. Camden had a rough time, mostly because he had to wear Afton's old life jacket that was choking him. We finally just took it off of him. The water is only a couple of feet deep and it isn't fast, so we felt okay about it. We figured that was safer than having him thrashing around in the canoe because he was so uncomfortable. We had a greater chance of tipping over that way!

When we got back to camp, we had a yummy spaghetti dinner that my mom had made for us while we were gone. We did more campfire stuff that night and played a game called Quiddler that Lara introduced us to. Camden was asleep in the trailer, so we played games out on the picnic table using a Coleman lantern for light. Well you can imagine the attraction that light was for bugs, and we continued to get dive bombed by these little beetles. It was annoying at first, but then it became so comical that we were laughing the whole night.

The next morning was when we returned to Idaho Falls and stayed at Lara's again. I was officially introduced to Guitar Hero and Dance Dance Revolution. I thought they were both pretty fun, and so did Camden. Well, everyone did.

The next day, Monday, was when we ended up back in Salt Lake. Hailey was there for a few hours and she and Camden and Grammy Carol got to play together. They jumped on the tramp a whole bunch, which Camden loved, and they also did a lot of puzzles. Grammy Carol's house is always so fun.

I will post all of our pictures separately from the post because there are so, so many.