First Fathers and Sons

-- This is a guest post by Matthew

Play by Play
The Fathers and Sons camp was in a ranchers farm on the banks of the Rio Grande river. It was really nice with a lot of trees but we were not allowed to have our own campfires. We arrived at the campsite about 6 and while I set up the campsite the boys played with the Bishop's son collecting sticks and throwing rocks. It was nice since we could just pull the truck up and then unload right there.

After playing around for a while I made dinner of a can of beans and toasted some bread on my backpacking twig stove. I brought some alcohol which worked well, and we were able to loan our little butane stove to some other people who couldn't get theirs to work. Two stoves for the win! After dinner the boys played some more in the sticks and looked for a good walking stick.

We then walked down to the banks of the Rio Grande and skipped rocks for about 20 minutes and then hiked up the river for a ways. After making our way back down we saw the Walkers swimming down by the river and the boys played with Andrew till it started to get dark. On the way back to camp Hyrum caught a frog which was quite the highlight. After playing with it and showing it around he threw it into the Rio Grande and we watched it swim back.

We ate some beef jerky and some dried mango and then I gave the boys some flashlights and headlamps and they played in the dark for about 30 min. After that they got into their pajamas and into bed. I stayed up for a while longer reading in the hammock and looking up at the stars and moon through the trees. It was quite lovely with a nice breeze.

During the night it got down to about 50 degrees and so I woke up and put the boys in their sleeping bags (it was above 80 when we went to sleep) and then from around 1 to 4 there was some major winds blowing which kept me up but the boys seemed ok. I got up about quarter to 6 which was nice and hung out in the hammock until the boys woke up. We had oatmeal and hot chocolate for breakfast.

The cattle came and paid us a visit as we started work on carving Hyrum's walking stick to be more ergonomic.

Turns out there was breakfast for the camp so we ate a second breakfast of pancakes and eggs. After I helped build some picnic tables and the boys played soccer with some other young kids. I then went to clean up camp and the boys played some baseball with other kids. We got all packed up and started the hour and a half drive up the the Jemez mountains. Up the canon we stopped by to see the soda hot springs and snapped some pictures.

We made our way up to Jemez Falls picnic area and then went on a nice half mile hike to see the falls.

Of course Abraham perfectly timed a sneeze for the first try at a picture.

We then ate our lunch of tuna and crackers and the boys wanted to call and tell Grandma about their adventure. This also managed to completely drain the phone's battery so no more pictures.

After that we went on a 5 mile hike to McKinney Hot Springs. It was a good hike, although probably a bit much for the boys. We ate some new pine growth on the way and then when we got to the springs we took a break and set up the hammock. There were some people swimming but they left and then Abraham striped down to his underwear and hopped in. Hyrum put his feet in and and tried to catch some tadpoles. We made the hike back with many breaks as Abraham was pretty tired. Once back to the truck we made the trip home in just 1 hour and 40 min! Not bad for our first Fathers and Sons camp!