Mackay Campgrounds and Idaho Tidbits

For this year's Hill family campground we made our home base a cabin in Mackay, ID. It was a good location to then drive to other places for daily activities, and it was our first time in a cabin which was suuuper nice. Not everyone fit in the cabin for sleeping, but everyone did for bathrooms/ kitchen prep, etc. I always enjoy looking back on camp setups for who knows why, so here's a few photos to remember that.

Our three weeks in Idaho went like this: Eclipse campout, Mackay Campout, Charly goes back to work for a week in Florida and Kristin stays back to do fun things with Eliza like get a cold and then sinus infection, but also see friends and go shopping, Charly comes back, we see more friends and family, go to the state fair, hike the Grand, then come home to hurricane Irma. It was lovely and exhausting and reenergizing at the same time, and we are ready to get back in the groove of things.

There was this time, when I was flying solo with Em and letting her play in the shower by herself in Idaho, when I heard her start to whine and act up. I immediately went into the bathroom to find out that she could reach the temp gauge in this shower and had turned it to hot! It wasn't scald your face off hot, but she was pressed up in the corner of the shower up on the tip toes of one foot. I barely had time to move forward to get her out, and before I know it her foot slips! Despite the fact that I ripped open the curtain shower and dove, fully dressed, hair just blow dried, in, her body still slid down the bathtub wall and onto the floor where the hot water hit her right in the face. I scooped that traumatized baby up so fast, wrapped her in a towel, and eventually rocked her back to her usual self but man was she not happy.

^^smelling all the flowers haha
Another, more amusing thing, was how in love with rocks Eliza has become! She fills her pockets and purses with them, sticks them in our pockets, and is constantly putting them in her mouth. She's like 2.5 and fully grew out of that stage but suddenly, everything goes in the mouth now! Whenever I try to drag her away she yells "pick a rock, pick a rock," and I have muster all my strength and agility as I bend over with a thrashing 25 pound weight as said weight chooses a rock while hanging in the air. Basically, I love my child enough to sacrifice my body for her happiness.

The thing about raising kids though, is that oftentimes the things that are so frustrating about raising them are the things you fall in love with the most, and I think it might be time to change our mulch bed to a rock bed;).

Baby Sea Turtles!

For weeks and weeks after moving to Florida I kept thinking to myself "I need to bring my real camera along" whenever we'd go somewhere like the beach. I put it off more and more until, finally, I packed it up and took it with us on one of our Sunday walks on the beach. I was snapping away photos of Em, who looks like such a baby to me in these now, when I looked over to the right and saw a bunch of movement in the sand. It was like there were all these crabs scurrying across it when suddenly it hit me- BABY SEA TURTLES HATCHING FROM THEIR NEST. I yelled at everyone else (Charly, Eliza, and my parents) and we watched as dozens broke out of their eggs and made for the sea. We helped them along as much as possible and I thought of so many analogies of comparing sea turtles to raising kids. For example, there is a fine line in helping them. We could scare away the crabs and the birds, but it was actually detrimental that they get themselves down the beach and into the water themselves. Then, after they get into the ocean, there's not much you can do except pray and offer moral support that they they make it as the seagulls hover over the ocean and who knows what else lurks underneath. Every parent on Earth: sound familiar?

After they were all done hatching, we played with Em on the beach as she maniacally picked up fistfuls of sand and threw them at us. I don't know if you've ever been as happy as a toddler about to throw sand at someone, because it's pretty dang happy. Eventually we stripped her soaking wet romper off and I have all these cute photos of her in her diaper with her hair sticking straight up and these big evil grins as she clenches the sand in her hand. Also, I miss that face in the next photo. That used to be the face Em made 95% of the time as she tried to figure the world out, and she doesn't make it nearly as much now.

Anyhow, I was in the middle of blogging our Idaho adventures when I remembered this day, and when I looked back at the photos and how much Em had change in what is almost exactly a year later, I knew I had to get them up here quickly before I forgot again! Back to your regular scheduled programming now ;).
Also, I really liked the shells on the beach that day:

Another Waterfall Hike

On Friday we headed out to the actual waterfall hike that was only a mile long and wheelchair accessible. We originally planned to split up, with some going on a three mile hike to a lake and the others taking the one mile long one. We got a suuuper late start, though, as we tried to fit in family home evening into the morning since some people were leaving camp earlier than the rest and we wanted to do it with as many people as possible. Speaking of which, the theme of that FHE was this story about lamplighters. At the end we were given papers and told to write our own lamplighter thoughts on it- quotes or anecdotes you made up or learned from someone who had lighted your lamp in life. Mine was "babies don't keep, but mothers always do."

Anyways, since we didn't get to the trailhead until 1 or 2pm, and since the three mile hike really turned out to be almost five, we all went on the shorter one.

Afterwards, as Charly and I were leaving, we decided to take a drive up the a trail that split off from the one we were on and see what it led to. I wasn't expecting much, but I should have been because I lived in Idaho long enough to know that its amazing at every turn. The mountain landscapes were gorgeous, and at one point we drove past this HUGE avalanche field. All the trees were mulled over and had these gnarly twists in their trunks. I definitely don't miss that consideration of winter when it comes to Idaho. While its cool to see the aftermath from a safe distance, avalanches totally freak me out.

anyways...

Mount Idaho, Mackay Dam Fishing, and a Hike...

...and all in one day! The Thursday of the campout was set aside for the older kids and adults to hike Mount Idaho. It is one of Idaho's 12'ers and Charly, as well as his brothers, are ticking them off their list year by year, one by one. I hoped to go on the hike, but I wasn't sure if using the hiking poles all day would irritated my bummed elbows, and I reeeeally wanted to hike the Grand in two and a half weeks. To me, the Grand was worth put health conditions at risk, but Mount Idaho wasn't. I also knew that my elbows would be feeling a lot better in a couple of weeks and have a better chance of withstanding the Grand as long as I let them heal for as long as possible. So that's why I stayed back and went fishing with the younger kids at Mackay dam, which turned out to be more watching them wade in the stream the fish.

Without further ado, here's Mount Idaho and Mackay dam reservoir photos:

The guys left super early to do the hike since thunderstorms were a possibility, and they didn't want to get caught on the summit in the middle of one. Since they did that, they got home in time to go on this short waterfall hike with us. It was only a couple of miles and not bad, but there was some confusion on the details of it and we were led to believe that it was a 1 mile handicap accessible hike. So Charly wore flip flops and I wore these shoes that are super comfortable, but upon which the soles move around when you walk a ton, so I was constantly having to fix them. We took this long bumpy road all the way to the trailhead and were joking that only in Idaho do you drive on a road like this to get to a handicap accessible trail! Then, when we did get there, we found out the truth! Definitely not a hard trail, but it was worthy of some decent shoes!

Anyways, it took us to two waterfalls along the trail and while it rained on us as we hiked ran back to the car, we were rewarded with the loveliest sunset as we drove back. Also, I'm just impressed that my man hiked a mountain and then came back to camp only to immediately turn around, strap a toddler to his back, and then go for another hike (and then finish that hike only to run back down the trail in the pouring rain to help carry more little kids back!)