we went camping—day 1

We went camping with all of Nate's family (except one brother). Papa Sam wanted to take everyone to see the petroglyphs in Price, and we also stopped in Helper so we could see the mining museum since my sister-in-law Heather has some ancestors who worked in mines. Or something like that. Before we left I made special books for each of the kids with pictures and words for them to find in the museum, around the camp, and in the canyon with the petroglyphs. We hoped that would help keep them engaged and happy. We got a really late start (thanks to someone who will not be mentioned) which cut about 3 hours out of our super short trip, and we arrived in Helper just before 5 pm.

The beautiful city of Helper, Utah. It has a museum.

See? They want you to know there is a museum.

Nate is the most excited about the museum.

Classy place.

Make sure you stop at the museum!

Two more signs to tell you there is a museum! (In case you missed the first two.)

The door to the museum said that they closed at 5, but we were hoping they might stay open a little while longer since we had come specifically to see the museum. They would not. We were allowed 5 minutes inside, and then we had to leave. You'd think that a town pumped up enough about their museum to have 4 separate signs about it would do more to accommodate people who want to see the museum. (Truthfully, I was actually disappointed. I love museums, and I wanted to spend more time there.) I took a lot of pictures.

Learning about brothels and bars!

Hannah loves stairwells!

Kaylee tolerates pictures!

Birdcage for the canaries.

Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid! Cool!

And...we're out.

I loved the building. Like, a lot. I have a weird affinity for buildings.

Over by where we parked were a bunch of huge machines. I don't know what they did. It was kinda rainy and I lost interest. But it was really important to Sam that we look at them. And get pictures in front of them. Corbin liked showing them to Gruncle Dennis. (A gruncle is a great uncle. Duh.)

Then it was time to drive to 9 Mile Canyon where we would camp. The kids (minus Jude and Jocelyn) would all sleep together in the tent, and the adults would sleep in these authentic pioneer cabins. The cabins were actually nicer than we were led to believe. They had solar panels so you could turn on a light, and the beds weren't too bad. One cabin had a nasty smell and a dead animal of some kind, so we did not use it but rather crammed into the other two.

There was also an outhouse. Which we didn't use. Because we paid extra for the privilege of using the flush toilet house.

After we got camp set up and ate our dinner, we went to look at the first couple of groups of petroglyphs.

It got dark pretty fast, and we returned to camp for smores and a snipe hunt. We tried to keep the snipe hunt fun and not scary, but 3 of the kids backed out really quick because they were afraid. Brad, Hannah and I had a great time making up rules of how to behave on a snipe hunt. Hilarious.