Sorry I haven't posted in a while. Things have been very busy at work since I got back from vacation, so all other activity has slowed, but we're getting things back on track and I can finally catch up on the blog. I have *a lot* to catch up on so let's get right down to it.
The Agenda
In July we took a two week vacation to Colorado. The original plan was to drive with our tent camper through eastern Oregon to Idaho, where we would stay for the night at a place called Three Island Crossing State Park. We were then going to continue on to Strawberry Reservoir in Utah for two days and then meet my brother to go camping at a remote place in Colorado called Buffalo Creek, which is in the Pike National Forest. We were then going to hit Willard Bay Utah on the way back and bring it on home.
The Trip with the tent trailer
We had a great, albeit long drive to Idaho the first day. We listened to an entire audiobook "The Teacher's Funeral" by Richard Peck (which is great, by the way) in order to pass the time. The kids did a great job and we were very excited to make it to Three Mile Crossing. The park was nice, but there were a ton of mosquitos, which kind of makes sense because the states park people obviously water the lawns a lot and it's likely the only source of moisture for a good ways for many of the insects. Thank god we had bug spray so it wasn't too big an issue.
If you notice in the picture we had a bit of an issue with the tent trailer because the bed there is kind of falling off of the rails. We worked around it though and the kids slept where the dining table folds down.
The next day we headed out. Jen got some time behind the wheel so that she could get some experience pulling the tent trailer, and she did a great job.
Unfortunately we had an issue just as we were approaching the Utah border. The brakes on the tent trailer seized up and caused us some problems. We were pretty much in the middle of nowhere. Jen was a little excited that she got to use the caution triangles she had purchased for the trip.
We had the tent trailer towed to Burley, Idaho. The guy there said he couldn't figure out what had caused the brakes to seize, so all he could do is disable them for use. Given that we were scheduled to go over the Rocky Mountains and we had the kids with us we decided it wasn't worth the risk and headed back home. We got back to Portland at 5:30 the next morning.
Not to be deterred we made a new plan, and like a phoenix from the ashes our vacation rose again... more to come soon.
