Camping!

Last night Brandon and I went camping at Cedar Canyon with our friend Christian. Even though I don't go very often I really do like camping. I love being outdoors, the smell of nature, seeing wildflowers, campfires, the food, and sleeping on the ground inside a tent. Even though this site was a pretty one of the things I didn't like is it was kind of close to a switchback on the road. It wasn't too bad but next time I want to go somewhere that is a lot further away from the main road.

Here is a picture of our campsite and a very attractive picture of me:

Brandon and Christian decided to get the fire going. So here are some pictures that go along with that:

 They were entranced by the flames:

We don't have a lot of our camping supplies so we rented some at the Outdoor Center on campus. For the most part they have good quality products. This "circus tent," however,  is not one of them:

(note all the openings along the bottom of the tent.)

Now, here comes the part where everyone has permission to hang and shake their head and think, "Oh Dana and Brandon what were you thinking?" The reason why you can do this is because as the night went on it started to have some scattered showers. We realized our tent was most likely going to leak and we knew it would be uncomfortable. We started talking about what to do and then Brandon and I decided we might as well go buy a tent. Brandon had gotten a nice bonus check that day and we really do want to go camping more so we figured might as well. So Christian and Brandon went back to town to get a tent. (Random side-story after they left within five minutes the fire went out. I then spent the next hour trying to get it going again. I never could and I realized my days at girls' camp had failed me.) 

Here is our new tent though where we stayed nice and dry all night:

These couple of pictures are kind of random but during the night I noticed a tiny green light on the ground:

It was on a stick and so Brandon picked it up and we realized it was a glow worm! I have never seen one before and I thought it was so cool. Here is a very blurry picture of it:

(after taking a picture we set the stick gently on the ground out of harms way. Some bird probably ate it this morning though.)

Another thing I LOVE about camping is I love making smores! There are a few people I want to meet and thank when I get to heaven and one of those people is the man/woman who invented smores (I also want to thank the man/woman who invented maple donuts.)

We found these freakishly large marshmallow at the store and so we got them:

In the morning we decided to drive up to the overlook and that shows quite a few features of Zion National Park:

Here is Brandon and me at the overlook:

(I wanted to do a group shot but Christian refused to be in it.)

To wrap it all up, here is Brandon at our apartment this morning trying to fit one of those marshmallows in his mouth:

We are planning on going camping again in September and go to Bryce Canyon and stay there Friday and Saturday night. We just need to pick a weekend that isn't Labor Day weekend because I rather not deal with those huge crowds!