Quick Camping

During Ann and Verne's visit down here, Ann had a three day outing with her sisters. During her outing, Verne suggested that he and I take some of the kids on a small overnight camping trip. Aylee and Johnathan have been bugging me about going fishing for some time, so we decided to take them on this little overnighter.

I took Monday afternoon and Tuesday morning off of work and we headed out. We spent Monday hitting a bunch of ghost towns and geocaches along the way - we didn't have a schedule to keep and we had planned on just finding a campsite when and where we needed one.

Our first stop was the town of thistle. In 1883 farming and ranching came into this area. In 1890 the Railroad built there. In April 1983 a mud slide which moved part of the mountain blocked the river and made an earth dam. The water backed up (65,000 Acre feet worth of water, 165 feet deep) which flooded and covered the land that thistle was located on, Puting an end to the town.


Our next stop was a store near a ghost town site named Clinton. We went into the store that was part of the original ghost town and moved up near the highway to attract visitors. The owner of the store was there and we started to talk to him. He had pictures of the old ghost town the way it was in the 1800s. His grandfather was the city marshall. He had pictures of him as well as a picture of his grandfather and Butch Cassidy. They were friends in their younger days and Butch Cassidy spent a lot of time in the store. It was a fun stop.

Royal was our final ghost town stop. It was nestled in a canyon that broke off from the canyon of the main highway. It took us a few times of turning around before we found it. We walked around and talked to a local water reclamation worker that was on his 4-wheeler in the area. Before we left this ghost town, we made a quick little 900 ft hike up the mountain to grab a geocache.

Our next stop was Price, UT where we roughed it and ordered dinner at McDonalds (this is the way that I like to camp!). We then headed off to find us a camping spot. On our way to find camping locations we passed the rescue crew base camp that was out to rescue to the miners trapped in the Huntington mines. We talked to the kids about the somber situation for a while.

We found a great camping spot within an hour. The site was along the river flowing down the canyon where the main highway was located. Verne and I pitched the tent while Aylee and Johnathan searched for dry fallen timber. Our wood situation was scarce but we found enough fire wood for our needs.

The kindling was all damp from an earlier rain, but after a lot of persistence we were able to get some flames going.

We roasted marshmallows and ate smores. The kids wanted to tell funny ghost stories, but we quickly ran out of those, so Bishop Verne suggested that we talk about some of Christ's parables and what they meant. We spent some time doing that and the kids enjoyed themselves.

As soon as we got up the next morning, we put all of the camping gear away and had some of Amber's delicious coffee cake that she cooked for our trip. We made a quick clean up of things and hurried off to Cleveland Reservoir to do some fishing.

The kids had a great time learning to cast better. We fished for a couple of hours or more and didn't catch anything - except for Johnathan who caught his chair, shirt, and pants several times with his hook.