Bear Lake Trip, Episode....14? 15?

 

I've completely lost track of how many years we have gone on our trip to Bear Lake. All I know is that it's been a lot. Most of my kids' lives, in fact! There are so many things about this tradition that are deeply ingrained in our core memories. 

I'm so glad that we have taken to going to the cabin on the day after Thanksgiving so we can drive in the morning and enjoy a little daylight. All of those years we went up in the dark! Oooo....Logan Canyon on a black and bitter cold winter night with little kids in the back of the car....yeah, I love driving up on a Friday morning. 

As our dear Inigo is still out of commission, we drove to Layton, and switched all of our gear over to Mary's Tahoe. What a blessing that she has a spare 4x4. A new thing this year was for us to stop in Logan before the last leg of the journey, because Molly is going to school there, and needed to drop a car and pick up a few other things from her dorm. It's so interesting to see how things have had to change over time as kids have grown up. I was sure missing having our Chase there. Next year, he will be home, but who knows if he will even come on the trip with us, and also Molly plans to be on a mission next year too. We will just have to take these changes in stride as the years go by!

One extremely lovely thing about the trip was that Mary's brother Tom, who owns the little carriage house, has been staying there recently as he has been overseeing work at a large resort he is creating at the shore of the lake. This meant that the cabin was already pretty clean and was in working order. Get this. When Troy went to start the generator it just TURNED ON. Also it stayed on. For as long as we wanted it. We had full power for the entire weekend. When was the last time this happened? Five years? I can't help but say it made for an especially lovely trip. Spoiled! Yay!

I had to laugh when we got to the cabin and got all our stuff out of the cars and inside. We settled ourselves, and promptly the Burnett kids began to wrestle. Troy said, "Ah, we are back at the cabin, where the Burnetts rough-house and the Preslars watch anxiously." We all started cracking up - could not be more true! This year Molly and Jack were especially rambunctious with each other and we all just had to keep a safe distance away. Cute Maggie is a pro at ignoring them - she just continued on quietly with whatever she had been up to anyway while her siblings pummeled each other.

 

Some highlights from the weekend - 

On Saturday morning, our friends the Findlays were a little late getting to the mouth of the canyon so we had some time to mess around. We went and walked around Tom's property, and Troy got some fun photos of Mary and co. on the Morgan equipment:

After touring the resort area, we went back to Gladdy's to wait for the Findlays. Only...it wasn't our beloved little liquor store any more! Ok, we never bought liquor there. I vaguely remember stopping for snacks and a diet coke there more than once. But the place was gone. Happily there was a new business in its place - and it was wood fired pizza. We decided we needed a snack (and thank heavens we did because the tree hunt took a LONG time), and got to enjoy some of the most delicious pizza I've had. You know what the pizza place was named? Gladdy's Pizza. We approve.

Not much has changed about the actual tree hunt, except for the increased number of people. I expect that will only continue from year to year. We felt very grateful that we had no trouble with the snow in the canyon or getting trapped by other people stuck in the snow. It was smooth sailing. And we found an absolutely massive tree.

Once we were back snug and sound in the cabin, Troy took Romney outside for some target practice. He had never brought a gun on the trip before, and I think they had a ton of fun doing some shooting in the afternoon. I expect that will be repeated in the future.

Also, Molly pulled out a 1000 piece puzzle and almost all of us spent at least some time, if not the rest of the trip, trying to put it together. There is something so soothing about puzzles, and it was great to gather around the kitchen island, sing along to the Christmas tunes and work on it together. 

In some ways, this year felt different. We didn't have as much bug removal to do. The kids didn't slip off to the loft to hang out and talk or play away from the adults like some years. We didn't hold our usual sacrament meeting together. We didn't have to do as much cleaning or getting the cabin ready to be unoccupied for weeks. Oh, and the deer carcass, affectionately named Dead Darla, has finally been removed from the fence along the road into the cabin. It's been hanging there for years. But the sense of deep friendship was there as always, and the delight of really kicking off the season...in a fun, old fashioned, family way....

We are so lucky we get to do this. And the tree? Well, it's huge. I mean, we always get a tree that is taller than we need and cut it down until it just barely clears the ceiling. (And sometimes doesn't: we have the sap stains to prove it.) But this baby is WIDE - the lower branches stretch so far out into the room that we had to configure the furniture differently than normal just to accommodate it. We adore it. One of the best trees we have ever found.

Hmmm. It doesn't look that big in this photo. But trust me. She's a beaut.