Rain/Hail = Mud

It's very obvious mother nature did not get my memo!

This weekend a group of friends from the ward decided to go camping at one of the couples family property in the mountains. 1/2 the group left at about 4:30 to head up to the property. Bob and I headed up about 6, and the other 1/2 left later that evening. Friday it was raining in the valley pretty bad. At one point as we were sitting at Arby's it started hailing. But we left anyways. Driving to our destination we could see that it looked like blue skies in the direction that we were heading, so we were optomistic. When we arrived to the turnoff to head up to the canyon about 2 miles from the property we met up the the first 1/2 of our group. The roads were pretty muddy so they were putting chains on the truck that was towing the four-wheelers. After we got the chains on the truck we started heading up the hill.

In the group we had 2 Jeeps, a truck with chains towing four wheelers and a van. Now if we thought we had to put chains on a 4 wheel drive truck to make it up the mountain with the mud I'm not sure why we thought the van would make it, but we tried. Even in 4 wheel drive we were sliding all over the place. The van quickly got stuck. The truck also go stuck. So we got the truck out of the ditch and it was on it's way. But got stuck again. The trailer had no traction on it at all so it was the main problem. When they finally got to a clearing they unhooked the trailer and took off the 4 wheelers. Then it was up to us to get the van unstuck. But not without our jeep sliding into a ditch. My husband was able to back up the out of the ditch. We got infront of the van and hooked up the tow strap then pulled it out of the ditch. Now it would have been smart to try to get the van back down the mountain but nope we just decided to tow it up. But not without the van sliding into another ditch further up the hill. So we left the van and tried to see how far we could make it. Yeah only about 100 feet before my husband was completely bogged down in another bigger ditch.

At this point they pretty much decided that we were not going to make it up the mountain. The sun had set and it was really dark with all the cloud cover. I was left in the van with one of my friends and her 3 kids. And by the time the guys got back I couldn't make it up the hill. Sandles are not made for hiking in mud. So I slept in the front seat of the van, 2 kids in the middle and my friend, her husband and one kid all the way in the back. My husband slept in his Jeep. After we had got comfortable in our vehicles to try to get some sleep we saw fishtailing headlights heading our direction. The van was completly blocking the road by this time. With a ditch on one side and a drop on the other side. So my husband came running down the hill to stop them from coming any further. It was one vehicle of the 2 half of the group coming up to meet us. They became stuck behind the van as they slid into the same ditch. So now we have an Explorer, Van, 2 Jeeps and a Truck (with a 8 month pregnent women in it) stuck in the mud all over the road for about a mile. Yeah it was a very interesting night.

The next morning we worked on getting vehicles unstuck and trying to keep the kids entertained and 1/2 way clean. About 2 pm the roads had finally dried up enough to get the van down the hill and we shuttled people up the mountain to the property. A guy that was staying near where we were stuck also helped in shuttling a few of us up to the property on his 4 wheeler. 2 couples were smart enough not to try the hill when they saw how muddy it was and ended up sleeping at a motel in Price. They came up mid-day and we shuttled them to the property.

Once to the property we had a blast. It was dry and we had a potty to use! We got camp set up and we were on our way to camping! The guys played Paintball at the top of the hill above camp (thanks Jeanette for letting us borrow the guns). We ate good food, rode four-wheelers, played horse shoes, card games and just had a blast.

By the time we all left Sunday the sky was blue as can be without a cloud in sight and the roads were completely dry.

It was stressful at first but looking back whe have a great memory of our first camping trip with the group!