Thirtydaycation: Chapter 1 - A Week in Wolf Creek

Twenty-one. That's how many months had passed since our family had last been to Utah. I hadn't been away from the Beehive State for that long since serving a mission in Florida (Sidenote, I did visit Utah last March, but it was a super-quick trip to see Bryan before he left for his own mission to Texas, and I went without Shayla and our kids, so it doesn't really count in this tally). And it is officially the longest Shayla, Max and Isla had gone without a visit to our former home state. As for Wyatt, well, he had never been. So when my parents announced last winter that they were planning a trip to Utah for the summer of 2012, and that they were going to reserve three condos at the rolling base of a northern Utah mountain, we knew we had to go. Not that my parents wouldn't have had fun without us, but three condos? We just couldn't let them all sit empty!

We promptly purchased tickets in February, and then began counting down the weeks to June 25. We initially planned on a two or three week vacation in Utah, but when Shayla's mom informed us they were having a reunion at the infamous Dirt Farm, we extended our trip by a week so we could make it. That gave us a full thirty days of blissful, humid-free summer!

The days slowly melted into weeks and finally the time for our trip arrived. We sneaked off to the airport and in no time we were in Las Vegas where Shayla's parents warmly welcomed us to the desert. Ah, DRY air!

Waiting to board our plane.

We pulled into St. George that night (well, technically the next morning) at about 3 am. We slept in, taking advantage of the comforts of Shayla's childhood home, and sometime around noon we rolled out of town and headed for Eden, Utah. The drive up to Eden took us about seven hours. Much longer than if we had just driven straight there, but Panda Express called out to us when we reached Cedar City so we had to stop for lunch, and then we stopped in Provo for a quick visit with Shana and Andy to do some grocery shopping.

We arrived in Eden around seven that evening and when we pulled into the parking lot at Wolf Creek Resort, we were all glad to finally be there! We got there at the perfect time too; my dad was grilling up some wild-caught Alaskan salmon and halibut he had just flown down to Utah, and even though I'm not a huge fishivore, my hungry stomach told my mouth that it was the tastiest fish I had ever tasted!

The view from the balcony of our condo.

The rest of the day was spent unpacking and talking. Max and Isla got reacquainted with their cousins, and Wyatt met nearly everyone in my family for the first time. We spent the next seven days enjoying the wonderful weather, eating good food, playing games, swimming, and hanging out and enjoying being together. With members of my family spread out from Alaska to the Eastern Seaboard—a distance of more than 4,300 miles—it had been nearly three years since we had all been in one place! I say all, but we were missing Bryan, who is currently serving in the Texas Lubbock Mission.

Playing games with grandma.

Chillin' outside.

My mom taught all the grandkids how to make marshmallow launchers with half a plastic cup and a balloon.

Isla, loading her marshmallow launcher.

Max and his cousins playing racquetball.

 

                         

One of the main events when my family gets together like this is what we have come to call the Wells Family Amazing Race but which really is just a collection of games, contests, and competitions that pit individual families against each other. The whole thing is designed to infuse our family with contention and spite as we beat each other down to determine who is supreme and who is well, not supreme. The victor is awarded the coveted Wooden Whale while the losers are forced to wallow in shame and self-pity. For the past three years Steve and Moe have claimed this trophy as their own (not because they are utterly supreme, but because it's been that long since the last Wells Family Amazing Race), and finally it was back up for grabs again. We faced off in a variety of Minute-to-Win-It style games and this year, Sam and Heather dominated the competition (I say dominated, but they only won by a measly two or three points). Congrats to them, they now get to add their names to the trophy and display it for all the world to see!

The Wooden Whale

Post-race "Happy Family" photo.

Post-race "Since we can't get the kids to all look at the camera at the same time, everyone should make a crazy face so it doesn't matter" photo.

The race wasn't the only highlight of our week in Wolf Creek, however. We also took the time together as a family to lay down our race-themed battle axes and do a little family photo shoot. The old Union Station in Ogden provided a great place for train-inspired family photography, and since no one is my family is an engineer (well, Sam is but he's the civil sort) or even a railroad worker, but several of us have previously ridden on trains, we figured it was the obvious choice for a photo-shooting location.

Photo by Steve.

All eleven grandkids held numbers for the order they were born.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Picnicking on the lawn outside the train station.

After running rampant with a camera and eleven children all eight-years-old or younger on rusty decrepit trains, we headed into downtown Ogden to the Treehouse Museum (Ogden's Children's Museum). We spent the next several hours running around, playing with toys and exploring the different themed rooms. Oh, all of the grandkids seemed to have fun too. There was a lot to do there, and Max and Isla probably would have spent the night had we let them!

 

Rory and Isla took good care of all the babies.

Apparently Max had enough of Utah so he took off to Canada.

                      

Wyatt discovered his inner cowboy.

Wyatt and Rory milked a cow.

Isla tried to pull the sword out of the stone. Unfortunately she isn't heir to the throne.

Max played the part of a donkey in a dramatic theatrical performance.

My dad took the "Knight Time" sign a bit too literally.

Max loved playing with the knights and castles.

 

On Saturday, we all went down to the Salt Lake Valley to support Kaden at his baptism. It was great that we were all able to be there for it, since living so far apart from each other it's not always easy to make it to important events like this. After the baptism, we went to downtown Salt Lake City and briefly checked out the new City Creek Center and spent a couple hours at Temple Square. It was a beautiful day and all of the fountains were quite tempting to Max and Isla. I'm glad we got to take them to such a beautiful place while we were in Utah.

                    

  








                    

The next day we ventured out to Snowbasin Ski Resort. Again, the weather was amazing and even though it was a bit warm at the base of the mountain, at the top it was very comfortable. We hiked from the Needles Lodge up the to top of the ridge line and looked out over Ogden and down toward the Great Salt Lake. It was a view I had taken in many times during the winter while strapped in to my snowboard, and the view made me instantly miss living in Utah with all of the beautiful vistas and majestic mountains. Max hiked the entire way by himself, and I was glad to see he did it without much trouble. I was a bit worried that hiking at nearly 10,000 feet would exhaust him, but it didn't seem to factor in at all.

Checking out the view from the gondola.

Isla found some snow.

Max and Blake, plotting our course on the trail map.

Once back at Wolf Creek, we spent the next couple days enjoying being together as a family. I'm glad we got to spend this time with my parents, brothers and sisters, and all of their kids. It was great to see how well Max and Isla got along with their cousins after not seeing them for so long. Isla was pretty much a baby the last time we were all together! Hopefully not so much time will pass before we are all together again.

On Tuesday, July 3, we packed our stuff up and Shayla, Max, Isla, Wyatt, and I headed north to Logan, Utah. We could have taken the highway like most traveling people, but we don't have much opportunity for mountain-road-driving in Virginia so we elected to take the much more scenic dirt road that wound up and over the mountains from Ogden Valley to Cache Valley. It had been over five years since we had been in Logan, and it was good to be back. It was fun to see all that had changed during our five-year absence, and it was even better to see everything we remembered while living there. Our first stop in Logan was lunch at the Center Street Grill, one of our old favorites, followed by a stop at our old apartment. There was a "For Rent" sign in the window so we took advantage of its currently empty state and peered in through all the windows. We were surprised to find that the apartment still had the old, grungy, bright turquoise carpet that was there when we lived in it. That carpet was in pretty bad shape when we lived there, I can't imagine how much worse it had gotten after five more years of use! In fact, the entire place looked very run-down and poorly taken care of. It was kind of sad to see it in that state.

It was fun to see where we lived back when our family was much smaller and life was much simpler. We even ran into one of our old neighbors who still lived in the complex. Max and Isla seemed interested in the stories we told them about our lives in that little apartment, and it was great to give them a little peek into our old place.

This isn't our old apartment, but the one next to it.

Unfortunately, our camera was lost-slash-stolen in St. George (more on that later) so we don't have too many photos from this part of our trip as they were all on the memory card inside the camera.

After checking out our old home, we drove up to one of our favorite camping places in northern Utah. A bumpy and dusty dirt road through Green Canyon led us to a campsite nestled up against a rugged cliff. We'd camped in Green Canyon a few times when we lived in Logan, but we'd always set up camp a little further up the road because this campsite was always taken. When I saw it empty, I pulled in and started to set up camp.

It turned out to be a great place to camp! We immediately discovered a small cave in the side of the cliff. This cave tunneled into the rock and opened up at the far end, where a small window provided just enough room to crawl out onto the top of the cliff. Of course, we had to crawl through it before doing anything else. Max and Isla did pretty good clambering up the smooth rocky surface and crawling through the hole, and Shayla and I had a lot of fun exploring a bit with them.

After we got our tent set up and all our stuff unpacked we piled back into the truck and drove back down to Cache Valley. Our first destination was Smithfield. Shayla used to work at the Wells Fargo Bank there and she wanted to stop to see if anyone she knew still worked there. I waited in the truck with sleeping kids while she went inside and found a couple of her old coworkers.

Our next stop was the Gossner Foods Cheese Factory. When living in Logan we would buy our cheese from this factory because it was much cheaper and fresher than purchasing cheese from the grocery store. We all sampled the cheese and tried the many flavors of shelf-stable milk, and then we headed off to a little Chinese restaurant called Wok on Wheels for dinner.

Wok on Wheels was one of our favorite places to eat and it didn't disappoint five years later! The restaurant still looked like we remembered it, the service, smells, and flavors brought back memories, the only thing we didn't remember was the portion sizes! Shayla and I weren't that hungry so we only ordered two entrees, thinking that we would just give most of it to Max, Isla, and Wyatt, but when they brought out our food there was enough there to feed the entire Chinese Army! When we were all done, it looked like we had hardly even touched it. With no place to refrigerate a week's worth of leftovers, we took it over to Moe's grandma's house where Steve and Moe were spending the night for the annual Cache Valley Third of July Fireworks.

After the food drop we made our way to our old chapel to watch the fireworks. It still wasn't dark and we had a few hours to wait until it was dark enough for the show to begin, so we spread our blanket out on the lawn, got out some toys and a couple of kick balls and played around until the sun dropped behind the mountains and a shower of fireworks spewed forth from Utah State University's Romney Stadium. After the show we climbed into the truck, pulled out of the parking lot, and sat in a congealed mass of thick, syrupy traffic. Thirty minutes later we were in the canyon, climbing into our sleeping bags, and getting ready for a good nights sleep!

The kids went quickly to sleep. And as Shayla and I lay there, we heard a loud thump on the truck parked just thirty feet from our tent. To say the least, it was enough to freak us out. I didn't think it was a thief in the night or anything like that, but I was pretty sure it was a bear. Or a mountain lion. Or a fire-breathing dragon. When you go camping all you want to hear at night is the soothing sound of a cricket symphony. Not a rhinoceros crashing into the side of your truck. I tried zipping down the tent window to try and catch a glimpse of the creature that was about to send us to our maker, but I saw nothing. I found the truck keys and pressed the panic button on the key fob, blasting the horn in hopes that I'd hear hoofs stampeding away or claws tearing through trees as the Creature of Doom made a getaway from the flashing lights and honking horn. I listened in the silence. Nothing.

After a few minutes I bravely went outside to check things out. I figured at the very least, I'd get eaten and save my family from certain death. I saw nothing. I went over and looked at the truck. It appeared fine. No scratches, no dents, no slashed tires. I climbed back into the tent. Minutes later I heard rustling in the bushes. This time the sound wasn't thirty feet away. It was RIGHT THERE! I could hear it, only a few feet away. I hit the side of the tent. Nothing. No animal or beast or Dementors. Minutes later I heard it again. This time it wasn't rustling through the bushes. It was breathing. Hot, steamy, foul breath poured from its nostrils. It was right next to me, just outside the tent! By now I figured it wasn't going to kill us. It was probably going to just eat our toes and ears, leaving the rest and letting us lie there in anguish. I lay there quietly as I heard it walk away. The sound was gone and as far as I know, the beast never returned. I never did find out what it was. I figure it was probably just a skunk or a raccoon or some other creature of the night. In any case, we survived.

The next morning, we packed up camp and headed back to Logan. Steve and Moe had told us about an amazing July 4th breakfast hosted by a local scout troop. We met them and Rory there, ate breakfast, and then drove up the hill to Utah State University. We made the arduous trek up the steps on Old Main Hill, realized that every single building on campus was closed for the holiday (except the University Inn, which we found out was still open during a mad rush to find a bathroom), checked out the buildings where I had my classes, realized that one of them was recently demolished and was now just a mess of rubble, and rescued a couple of large, yellow butterflies that had gotten stuck on an air intake for one of the buildings.

After walking around campus for a while, we got back in the truck and drove over to the Willow Park Zoo. This little zoo was always a fun place to visit and we brought Max here a few times when he was just a little baby. We had a great time checking out all the animals and playing at the playground next door.

After the zoo, we headed down the freeway to meet up with the rest of my family at Sam's house in the Salt Lake Valley. We had a quick barbecue and then we left Wyatt with my mom while Shayla, Max, Isla, and myself went to a Real Salt Lake soccer game with Steve and Moe. Max had been to a game years ago, before we moved to Virginia, but this was Isla's first time. She wore her little RSL soccer jersey and shorts, and when she got there she was quite disappointed when she realized she didn't get to go out on the field and play the game herself! The game was good, but ended in a tie with the Seattle Sounders. Max and Isla both enjoyed bright pink and blue cotton candy, which I think was probably the highlight of the game for them. The best part however, was the July 4th fireworks show that followed the game. The team opened up the field and let the fans pour out onto the grass surface to watch the fireworks. It was awesome to be sitting on the grass, and our view of the fireworks was AMAZING! It was seriously the best fireworks show I have ever been to. Ever. And I'd like to think that I've been to a few good fireworks shows in my day. This one beat them all.

Wyatt enjoyed sparklers with my parents while we enjoyed the game.

 

 

Real Salt Lake game photos pilfered from Steve. Except the first one, which was taken with my phone.

 We spent the night at Sam's house, and shortly after returning there after the game Max disappeared into the bathroom. When Shayla finally found him she realized he had the runs. Minutes later, as I was holding Isla in the living room, she puked. All over. It spewed forth like a fountain of molten cotton candy. OK, something was not right with our kids. Sam and Heather told us that their kids had been sick while we were all up at Wolf Creek, and that for one night they were up all night long cleaning up vomit. Great. We were in for a long night.

Max and Isla camped out on the living room floor, and, worried about rushing them off to the bathroom in the middle of the night, I decided to sleep on the couch next to them, letting Shayla sleep downstairs on a bed with Wyatt. Hopefully at least one of us would get some sleep.

I nervously went to sleep, fully expecting to wake up in an hour or so. Fortunately, both Max and Isla slept through the night, and they both seemed to be feeling much better the next day.

Max and Kaden playing Wii.

Isla loved dressing up in Adalee's princess dresses.

In the morning, overcast skies greeted us with drizzling rain. I usually don't mind a little rain, but all our stuff was packed into the back of Shayla's dad's truck, and with a drive down to St. George in front of us I really wasn't looking forward to unpacking wet, soggy bags and clothes once we got there. A quick stop at the local IFA to purchase tarps provided an easy solution. I covered everything up, loaded up the kids, and said goodbye to Sam's family.

We stopped in Orem on our way to St. George to see my grandparents, and after an hour or so we were finally headed south, out of the rain and on to St. George!