Trip to the north, part 2

We drove to the trail head for the Collie Lake hike and were surprised to see quite the burned down forest. The hike up to the lake was...not my favorite hike we have ever done, but Stan was patient :) and we made it. We climbed over all kinds of fallen trees. As always, the pictures hardly do justice to what we experienced. We had to do a little detective work to figure out where the trail was at times.

 Pretty much we just hung out and fished for all of Tuesday evening, Wednesday, and Thursday morning. We had the lake to ourselves on Wednesday and we hiked around most of the lake. We caught quite a few fish and had such a wonderful time!

This is the one fish we kept that I had caught. He was sure a feisty guy and I was scared he was going to jump right out of my hands.

We kept two fish for lunch on Wednesday. They were super delicious!

We hiked on Thursday morning and said goodbye to this little heaven. It had been such a beautiful, peaceful trip. 

Trip to the north, part 1

Well we had an awesome, wonderful opportunity the other week, almost a month ago now, to head to Idaho. Stan's brother was getting home from his mission and we had planned to spend about a week in Idaho. It was such a great trip!

Since it was a 14 hour drive total, we split it between two days and stayed in the booming town of Monticello, Utah on the way there. It was so fun to spend time there in Filer for the weekend. I loved meeting Kevin and we had such a good time with everyone. 

We started off the weekend right with family pictures bright and early :)

We spent Saturday getting ready for a big backpacking trip and just hanging out together. Kevin gave a great talk on Sunday and there was a HUGE family gathering that afternoon with delicious food :)

Monday morning, everyone except Mom, Josie, and the kiddos, headed to Redfish Lake where we took a little boat ride to the trailhead. 

We hiked to the Bench Lakes and set up camp at the second one. 

A couple of us continued on up to the third lake to do a little fishing. The little hike to that lake was stinkin' steep but it was such a beautiful view when we got there. 

Tuesday morning we packed up and hiked out. 

The rest of the family headed home while Stan and headed on to the next part of our adventure, Collie Lake.