Camping up at Maple Canyon

Mat and I have been wanting to go camping with just our little family all summer and we finally just found a date that would work, went on line to recreation.gov and we got a campsite reserved for us up Maple Canyon. The last time that Mat and I went camping up there was when we were at Snow College and we went with our roommates and we just started dating. It was a lot of fun then. We went rock climbing, repelling and just hiked around there with all of our friends. This time it was a little bit different for the fact that we had 3 young boys with us, especially Hayden who is only 9 months old. But we still had a great, relaxing time. We just hiked around a little bit and the boys went with Mat and found little things to do a fun, quick craft on paper plates with all nature things. Daxton made a cute little doggy with flowers for eyes, rocks for a nose, bark for his ears, a twig for the mouth and a leaf for the tongue. It was really cute. And Corbin's was just a collage of everything that he had found.
We got to Maple Canyon on Friday night and first thing we needed to do was start a fire so that dinner could start cooking. Well all the stuff that we found was all green wood and it was having a hard time staying lite and was really smokey. But we got dinner going and the tent setup and finally ate around 7pm. Not too bad, but I was starving. Most of my food was not cooked all the way. We did tinfoil dinners and I had bigger portion of veggies for Hayden to eat with me. I ended up feeding up something else before ours were done. I ate some of Mat's veggies because most of mine were still really crunchy. Not my favorite. Anyway, the kids were so excited to finally be camping. They talked about it all week. We got them ready for bed and let them stay up for a little bit. But they were getting onrey so we put the younger two to bed and Mat and Daxton went looking for firewood. While they were gone I caught on video Corbin and Hayden just giggling away. They were not sleeping and it was funny to just hear them laugh and play in the tent. Glad it was laughing and not fighting and crying. Silly boys that I have. Once Daxton got into the tent, the other two settled down for a little bit and things were quite by 9:30pm. Mat and I didn't stay up much longer playing card games and just enjoying the beauty up there even in the dark and just relaxed and didn't have to worry about anything.
The next day after a sleepless night of the boys falling off their mattresses and crying because it was cold and having to go potty we finally got up after 7pm and got breakfast going. After a yummy breakfast burritoes we got everyone dressed for the day and Hayden went down for a nap. During that time Mat took Daxton off to go looking for more firewood while Corbin helped me clean up camp. Daxton felt very special to go and help daddy this whole last weekend and mommy couldn't help at all. He was very pleased with himself for helping daddy find lots of firewood. Corbin on the other hand wouldn't stay out of putting things into the firepit. NO matter how many times we would get after him for it. He still would do it because mommy and daddy were doing it. What do you do? The whole time there we thought he would get burned by the fire, but loal and behold Daxton gets burned on his hand after dinner when we put his hand where the coals from dinner had been on the griddle area. The coals were gone, but the heat on the metal was still there. Luckily we treated it right away and we knew just what to do especially after he had burned his feet last year at my sister's wedding dinner. That was unpleasant and this was a little more bearable. So we had one small injury along with Corbin constantly falling down on all the little things, yet still able to climb rocks and hills without any problems. Silly boy. Oh and during that day Corbin and I watched these squirrels ravage through our garbage that they made a hole into the night before. He named them Mo and Jo. They were fun to watch and kept him entertained for an hour or so.
We came home early Sunday morning. We were out of our camp spot before 9 am and got home about 9:45am Quick trip home. Nice to be so close to such a beautiful area. Can't wait to go camping with Mat's family to Ferron Mountain next weekend. I love CAMPING!!!!