The Year of the Raft

Yep. We are going back to the place we love. The place we could easily call our second home.

If only there was indoor plumbing...

These first two pictures took place in 1996, 15 years ago up at Lily Lake. (I think Lily Lake is more like a giant pond though)

We had just gotten married a couple months earlier and I had just gotten over Mono(the kissing disease). I'd gotten close to losing my job over this trip. I guess between our recent vacation to Lake Powell with Mckay and MaryAnn, then staying home for weeks sick with Mono after that, and then the Uintas for my first time.....I had missed a lot of work. Loosing my job at The Candy Factory was a risk I was quickly willing to gamble.

There was no way I was going to miss it.

I remember how hard the hike was up to the lake...ALL UP HILL and a half a mile long. It was so worth it though.

Damon and his cousin Jeff took a somewhat doubtful looking raft out on the water so they could fish from the middle. Legend has it that there are some giant sized whoppers still in there somewhere, though no one had caught a single one, big or small, for years and years. I remember Damon brought this battery powered fishing lure that he bought off of an infomercial. He was so excited to try it out because it was supposed to make fish "jump out at you."

I can't explain how hilarious it was to watch them out in the middle of the lake with the raft falling apart right under their feet. I got a pretty good laugh.

It was ranked one of the best memories I have of this place.

Surprisingly, no one in the whole family caught a fish at Lily Lake, yet again, that year.

And a year later at Lily Lake.(I love this picture)

A few other favorite memories of the Uintas....

-Hiking to the bat cave with Damon and Jeff and then running back to camp in the pouring rain.

-The year Damon, Jeff, and I hiked and fished up the Swift Creek trail. It was overcast and rained lightly almost all day. Damon wore a bright yellow poncho and I wore a ? colored one. I remember so clearly because I couldn't take my eyes off him. Come evening time Dae and I realized that Jeff was no where in sight. We looked around for him and then waited on the trail for what seemed like hours. Finally we decided to go gather a search party for him.(It was kind of a normal thing) On the way back down the trail we wrote very OBVIOUS messages to Jeff in the dirt just in case, telling him that we had left. By the time we got back and gathered the search party it was dark. Just in time too, cause Jeff came rolling in.

-Hiking to the Gorge with Damon and then trying to beat Jeff to all the fishing holes.

-Damon giving me piggy back rides across the rivers during our hikes together...because there was really no reason for both of us to get wet.(Pretty much every year)

-Before we had children we would play hours on end of card games during the rainstorms with all the guys, uncles included.

-Damon teaching me to cast a fly fishing rod on the dirt road.

-Fishing the reservoir on my own.

-Frightening wandering cows by honking and yelling at them out the truck windows as they stupidly stand in the middle of the road. It happens EVERY year without fail.

-Last year, running down the road with Kandus and Lucy...racing, singing and dancing. And then picking flowers.

-Watching Kandus and Lucy learn to ride their bikes.

-Deac getting a dirt clod thrown in his face, giving him a uni brow like Bert on Sesame Street.