The great outdoors...

So we decided to pack up and take a fun family camping trip this weekend. You know, breathe in some fresh mountain air, cook tinfoil dinners around the campfire, do some fishing, the whole outdoor shebang. Yeah lets just say it pretty much turned out to be the camping camping trip from hell haha. We definatly had some good moments, but oh my gosh, apparantly we were not supposed to be camping this weekend. We should have paid attention to all the signs ha ha!
We headed out a few hours later then planned, and after we had to turn around when i relized i'd forgotten my hiking shoes and all i had were flip flops. And as soon as we got cruising on the freeway we had to slow down to a crawl behind a line of cars because a semi had caught on fire and they had one lane closed.
Sign #1.
We stayed in stop and go traffic and could not believe our bad luck for what seemed like an eternity, then we were really on our way to the great outdoors. We got to tropic and spent a couple of hours with my cute inlaws then took off to find our camping spot. Now just know that we'd never been to this mountain, or camping spot before. Dan looked up directions online and kind of had an idea where we were going (this really should have been a sign too lol, had i only known).
So we're driving and finally got to Boulder Mountain and started our climb up this dirt road. We drove a few hours trying to find our lake (with a very unhappy 2 year old that had been in her carseat for hours), when we realized that we were going to run out of gas.
Sign #2.
So we had to drive about 3 hours off this bumpy, dirt roaded mountain and into the nearest town to fill up, then started heading the few more hours back up the mountain. And after getting faulty directions from an indian dude that had no idea what he was talking about, driving around aimlessly, beating up our truck, trying to get Taya to go to sleep, and after reaching the very top of the mountain and a dead end we decided that we werent going to find it that night. We reversed, drove back off the mountain again and back into the closest town again to find a motel.
Sign #3.
Woke up and headed back to the mountain. Got a map and new directions, and found out that we'd been on the wrong side of the mountain. Now boulder mountain is known for its bears. My mom called the day before we left, and gave me a warning about boulder being bear country, and how people get pulled out of their tents all the time by bears, and get attacked, and are hunted down and mutilated while just minding their own business. Great. So i pretty much begged dan to change camping locations but he had his heart set on hiking to these pretty lakes to catch trophy fish. (and for those of you that know my husband you can pretty much guess how the conversation went lol). But he assured me that we'd take bear precautions and would be fine.
The first sign we see coming up the road...

CAUTION: BEAR COUNTRY..bear proofing your camp, what to do if attacked...etc. Scary!

Dan trying to find out where the heck we were ha ha....
Fortunatly this time we found the right road, and unfortunatly it looked like this...
The entire 10 miles of this rock road took took over 2 hours to inch through, absolutely beating our poor truck in the process.
Sign #4.

Once we got there and got set up, besides me being paranoid of bears and not letting Taya away from my side the entire time, we started having some fun! We took a long hike taking turns holding Taya to these absolutely beautiful lakes. They were so pretty, and Dan caught some fish while Taya and i chilled and played in the water.

That night i was so terrified of bears ripping through our tent i couldnt even sleep. Right as i was starting to fall asleep Dan let out a big snore and it scared me so freaking bad! I thought a bear growled right by my head and i smacked dan and woke him up haha. Then the fire popped and i smacked him again to ask if he heard that, because for sure i knew a bear was walking around our tent lol. When i finally fell asleep i had nightmares about a bear ripping our tent open and trying to hide taya under the air mattress, thanks mom.

So the next morning we started home and that freaking road was so bumpy and rocky it took hours to get off the mountain again and we were totally worn out and ready to be home. We were starving and looking foreward to eating lunch when guess what, we got a flat tire! Sign #5 ha ha. So after pulling over on the side of the road, trying to keep taya preoccupied with snacks and rocks, and taking an hour to change a tire in the heat we headed started again back home....wow. All in all we ended up haveing to replace all four of our tires because the rocks had cut them up so bad! It was the most expensive and trying camping trip i've ever been on....but at least we got a good story to tell right?