Camping at Bear Lake

In all Jared's years of living here in Southeast Idaho, Jared has not ever camped at Bear Lake. So, we thought that we would try it out. It was great because we were meeting up with my brother, Jamie and his family, so it was a nice central location...they live in Utah.

We loaded up the car with as much stuff as we could fit and headed out on our way. As you can see, we were pretty full. We took out one of the captain's chairs to make room for ice coolers, and totes full of camping supplies.

We went to Cloverleaf campground just outside of St. Charles. It was so beautiful. It reminded me of home with all the mountains around and tall green trees. I loved it, Jared starts to feel claustrophobic when he can't see the expanse of the sky. He likes to see a storm coming and have hours to prepare verses here in this little canyon with only 15 minute warnings as the storm clouds crest over the mountains.

We went to Bear Lake's North Beach one of our days camping. It was amazing. Bear Lake is called the Caribbean of Idaho. It is True!

A typical picture with my baby Jordyn at the beach.

A typical picture of Eli on the beach. He is so funny because he never gets wet above his waist and he always wants to wear his life jacket anyways.

Two hot momma's lounging in the sun, Melissa and me.

The sand was really fine there. Very soft on your feet. The kids liked playing in the sand because there were little crab shells or snail shells all over that they enjoyed collecting...I won't tell them that they "accidentally" got thrown away later while we were cleaning out the car once we got home.

Eli, Lexie, Jordyn, and Mack

My brother, Jamie showing off the Strong muscles...imagine reading that in an Arnold voice. Do you also notice how pretty a blue the water is?

This is an even better view of the lake....so so so  pretty!

The really cool thing about the lake was that is stayed shallow for at least 100 yards out. No kidding! Jared was out past the boat in this picture and it still only went to his waist. I loved it! My favorite part of playing at the beach was when we played water volleyball. Because of the shallowness of the water, it was really warm and so we could all stand in it and play around an d if you went under the water, you didn't freeze to death afterwards! I loved seeing Jared go for the ball and it totally slip through the set he was making and nail himself in the face. So funny!

Jamie and Carson, my nephew, were playing baseball and when I went to hit the ball, I broke the bat with my womanly strength and it bent right in half.

On Friday, the weather cooled down a bit and so we hung around camp and just played games and lounged. I love just hanging out while camping!

I was playing cribbage with Jamie and he had all these messed up rules to the game. He tried to take extra points for crossing the skunk line first and so I had to teach him about how you just get to move your extra match piece one more peg if you finish before the other person passes the skunk line. He tried to use the jokers and do all sorts of tricks, but Jared and I quickly put him in his place and taught him the right way to play the game.

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We got glow sticks for the kids but Jamie and I had more fun with them.

 On Thursday night there was thunder storm that had flash upon flash upon flash of lighting followed by thunder that was so loud and just rumbled and vibrated through your body. It was so cool. I love thunderstorms. 

We've done two camping trips this summer and both were a success.