Payson Lake

We went with Aaron's family camping to Payson Lake this past weekend. We have never taken our kids camping before so this was definitely a first. When we planned this trip back in February I thought Grant would be walking by now. It made it more interesting having him crawling everywhere. He didn't have a very good time.
Payson Lake is a better lake to play in, so the kids actually got to get their swimming suits on and play in the water. Which is nice when you are camping to wash some of the dirt off. The campground didn't have the flushing toilets like I was led to believe. My girls handled it really well though.

We went up Thursday after work and came home Saturday morning, so we were really only there one day. After swimming in the lake my family headed back to Payson so Aaron could try to find a Internet connection somewhere to check on something for work. We got a few supplies at the grocery store and headed back. While we were down there we saw smoke coming off of the mountain and several firetrucks headed that way. In the 30 minutes we were in Payson it was obvious this was a large wildfire. We wondered if we were going to be able to get back, but it was far enough from the road that we were able to keep going.

On the way back up to the lake we pass Aaron's brothers heading down to get a shake. We tell one of them about the fire and then keep going. We get back to the camp where Aaron's parents and my 4 year old niece had stayed behind to get dinner started. We get a call a few minutes later from his brother saying that they had closed the road and they couldn't get back up. A few minutes later they call again and say that a police officer told them that they were going to evacuate the entire canyon, including Payson Lake. Those of us at the campground create a quick evacuation plan. We start deflating everything, we take the dutch ovens off of the fire, we are rolling up sleeping bags. We have to get as much as we can - including my niece into our van and the truck. We were all packed tight getting there, so we weren't going to be able to take everything. My children are freaking out, Whitney was crying she was so scared. We had to stop and have a prayer to help her calm down and know that everything was going to be OK. About 10 minutes later we get another call saying that they were letting his brothers through and that they were not going to evacuate more than the scout camp closer to the fire. So then the question was - do we still leave or do we stay there for the night? We decide to finish making dinner and then pack up and leave.

After everyone was back together we decided that we would stick to the original plan and stay the night and leave the next morning. We really were not that close to the fire, and weren't in a lot of danger there. In crisis situations like that information changes every minute. No one really knows what is going on or what is going to happen. It was probably just one police officer that thought they would evacuate the canyon when in fact they probably never intended to. The next morning the road was still closed so we had to drive out through Nephi. An extra hour and half of driving, but it was a very scenic route home.

Despite a few crazy moments in our vacations we had a great time with both families. My children loved being with their cousins. It would have been nice to not have the trips so close together, but then again, once you have the stuff out, you just as well get it all over with. I literally washed clothes from the first trip and put them back into the suitcases. I left most of the stuff in my living room and repacked everything for the next one. Now I have the fun time of doing laundry all day tomorrow to try and get the camp fire smell off of everything. The fun continues. :)