Back from the woods!

Amazing! That is the one word that comes to mind when describing the scenery from our vacation to Wyoming. When we set out on the long drive I was familiar with a good portion of the drive, a much more interesting drive than the drive South when we head out to Vegas. The southern route is tons and tons of NOTHING. Flat, ugly, boring for the most part. But this drive to Wyoming is green and rolling with fields and farms and pastures of cows grazing and swishing their tails.

While we have gone as far as Jackson Hole before and into parts of Yellowstone we had not gone much beyond into the mountains, so this time would be fun for the whole family to see what lie beyond Jackson Hole. My inlaws planned the trip, my father inlaw knew that I was not much of a camper. Having grown up in a family where "camping" was a foreign word and things like "fishing" and "hiking" were also words that made us blink in confusion, my father inlaw didn't want to throw me into shock with tents and outhouses made of a hole in the dirt. But he also wanted the girls to be able to experience fishing and nature, so he made reservations at Togwotee Lodge"> a fantastic place with cute little cabins in the mountains where deer grazed outside of windows early in the morning for breakfast, birds chirped happily in the tops of swaying pine trees and streams and lakes sparkled like they were filled with diamonds.

We had cabins right next to each other so that the girls could navigate the dirt and rocks back and forth to visit Grammie and Poppa, while stopping to practice casting their new little fising rods, before asking gleefully if they could go and play with rocks.



I have never seen the two of them more carefree and dirty and it was wonderful! The mountain air turned Little One into a crazy woods baby. She was bouncing all over the place mud smeared on her cheeks arms waving in the air.





And G took to it like she'd been born to BigFoot and had lived in the mountains her whole life! She built fantastic rock formations, had her Barbies put on an outdoor production of Pirates of Penzance singing at the top of her lungs! She even tried to actually fish until she caught a fish and as she was reeling it in realized that she didn't really want to catch a fish and took off in horror her pole dropped to the dirt.






Fishing was actually really really fun! I have never been fishing before and had always wanted to try it. Not the kind of fishing where you haul the little guy out, beat his head on a rock and then fry him up for dinner. But just some catch and release. It's not that I don't like a good fish dinner, I LOVE fish! But there is just something quite ookey about seeing him flopping around and then knowing soon you'll be adding some seasoning salt to him and digging in with a fork!

I loved the whole process, watching my father in law put the worms on the hook and learning how to cast. That was quite funny, it reminded me of someone lining up to hit the perfect ball in golf. The one that is going to land on the green inches from the hole and then roll in....but instead you whack that ball only to have it barely plop off the tee about a foot in front of you. That is how I would describe my first few times of casting the fishing line. It would basically shoot out and then straight down almost hitting me as it hit the ground at my feet. "Release at 1:00!" My father inlaw would call out....and soon I felt like Norm McClean in "A River Runs Through It" The line sailing out into the water with a beautiful arc. And when I caught a fish well HELLO! That was awesome. G still talks about her favorite part of the trip, "When you caught that big fish mommy and then it fell off the hook and you screamed and took off!" Well you try having the big flopping fish come off the hook spazzing out at your feet....I'm sure even Norm McClean would have run off screaming like a girl!!





In addition to the great fishing day we also got to do a full on chuck wagon dinner evening. Driving further into the gorgeous wilderness we were greeted with three wagons hitched to the most incredible horses and driven by some really nice cowboys. They took the wagons on a gorgeous 30 min trek up into the mountains where the cutest couple awaited us with yummy steak dinners complete with baked potatoes, homemade baked beans, corn muffins, yummy brownies and hot dogs for the kids all cooking in this open canopy area where we ate and listened to the adorable elderly woman of the couple told cute jokes and then the sweet man sang us fantastic songs as he strummed the guitar. When the two of them sang together it was something straight out of the Johnny Cash and June Carter Cash movie! (totally having a mental block on the name of that movie right now argh!)










There was even a fun sing along where they did the chicken dance and the hokey pokey. The girls seriously thought they had died and gone to heaven and it was smack dab in the middle of the Wyoming mountains!

Then the last full day we were there we went on a wonderful boat ride that took us to the base of the tetons where you were able to see the glaciers. The water was incredible, I just wanted to jump out of the boat and swim in it. Perfectly blue and sparkling with boats zipping around and people fishing and milling about. I honestly wished I could have bottled up the scenery there and brought it home to take pictures of 24/7. Clearly you can see I enjoyed using my camera on vacation!!









It was such a fun vacation that our family was really really in need of.

Next week back to work and back to real life again but for now I'm going to enjoy this final weekend and have some fun :)