No mamby pamby city vacation

Getting ready to get into Oneida Narrows

For awhile now, I've been wanting to do a camping vacation that includes all my favorite Idaho spots.  I really do love Idaho.  It must be in my blood or something.  When you live in Northern Utah, there are a lot of Idaho jokes but I've actually always been jealous of anyone who lives there.  So I spent 3 days to get ready, 3 days to camp, and 3 days to clean up from it all.  Camping is hard work when you're the mom.  No wonder my mom never liked it.  But it ended up being worth every bit.

At our hotsprings/ campsite

First, we floated the Oneida Narrows which was a bit chilly since we did it in the evening hours.  But luckily our campsite had natural hot pools built into the ground and we spent a few hours REALLY warming up.  I loved our campsite there and we mostly had it all to ourselves.  That's another thing I  love about most places in Idaho.

the ropeswing

The next day, we went and tried out the rope swing in Grace.  There were no big face plants like my previous one.  I opted out this time and had a lot of fun watching the kids go off of it.

The next night we drove up to Georgetown and camped at the summit view.  My main reason to go there was to find more huckleberries but people are saying that it was just to dry and not enough around to be worth the time.  I found a few but they were very shriveled up.

AJ and Nicole

We had a super fun and memorable game of masterpiece on our picnic table after dinner.  All the kids slept in hammocks tied to trees and Mario and I had the tent to ourselves.  Nicole came with us and we loved having her!

Our next stop was bear lake with it's bazillion people on north beach.  I can't believe how popular that place is now when a few years ago, hardly anyone went to that side.  But, we found space for our sandcastles and we ate lunch there and then stopped for raspberry shakes on the way home. 

Bear Lake fun

I loved this vacation.  It was probably my favorite thing that we did all summer.  I love the simple out in nature feel of camping,  Ian gave me a hard time because I kept telling the kids that this was not going to be one of our 'mamby, pamby, city vacations'.  But then I packed my big air mattress and some other luxuries that I didn't think I could live without.   I also pulled out our walkie talkies and Ian held up his phone and yelled, "mom, we have these!"  AJ died laughing because it was just like the Galaxy Quest scene that we quote all the time.