Camping in the Uintas

I love camping and have wanted to go ever since Dennis and I have been married. Even though I have summers off, Dennis has school and work and there never seems to be enough time. This year I was determined to go camping, so we bought a tent for $50 at Costco and headed up to the Unitas. Neither of us had ever been there, but for a couple of Washingtonians, we loved it! High in the mountains, the Uinta National Forest gets more rain than anywhere in Utah, and all the green was a welcome sight! It just happened to start raining right when we drove up there, which was refreshing but rather disappointing. As Dennis pointed out, we've both been camping plenty of times in the rain in Washington, so it would be nice to camp without rain for a change. So we drove around a bunch of different campgrounds trying to find a good one for future trips, ate lunch in the car at a scenic view point, and before we headed home I begged Dennis to go on a hike with me. We settled for a walk around the popular Mirror Lake.

Our walk around Mirror Lake

Standing in the rain 

Dennis standing in the lake. We could literally see the fish swimming in the water, and they were jumping like crazy! It was a well stocked lake - if only we would have brought our fishing poles!

 

The rain let up so we decided to camp after all. This is our tent pitched at our campsite!

 

There were a bunch of little streams that ran through the campground, so even though there was a burn ban we were allowed to build a fire! Unfortunately we didn't have any fire wood so we had to gather very wet wood from around the campground to try to start a fire. I was glad I packed matches, only to discover they were strike on box only, and we didn't have the box. Dennis was very determined and tried many different techniques and surfaces to strike the matches on, and got a few sparks, but nothing that would light the wet wood. As it grew darker and colder, we grew more and more determined to have a campfire! Finally, I remembered the propane grill Caroline had given us for Christmas - it saved us! We used the propane flame to light our matches to light our fire! It was still tough with all the wet wood, but luckily Dennis is a very capable Life Scout (two ranks below eagle) and got the fire ablaze. But rather than sit back and enjoy the fire, one of us had to blow on it while the other took off with a flashlight foraging for more wood. When we realized that it was more work than it was worth, we let it dwindle and went to bed. All in all it was a fun and beautiful camping trip and a few weeks later we went again!