Fathers and Sons in the Desert

This year for Fathers and Sons with the 11-12 year old scouts, we went out to the west desert to camp.  We had a great time spending time together and enjoying the great weather!  Here's our camp:

 Of course when we saw this "peak" we had to climb it!  Luckily there's a trail (bottom left) that leads all the way to the top!

I loved spending time with my own son!  YES!  My oldest son is now 11 and can go on campouts with the scouts!

Rockport Reservoir Yurt Campout

Ok, so I can hardly call it a "campout" if we slept in Yurts, but there wasn't hardly any snow so we couldn't do our regular Snow Cave Campout this year.  I don't count the night as a camping night either if they're sleeping in a Yurt.  But it was a fun outing!
We played football out on the ice (frozen over reservoir).  We found out the ice was 2 feet thick!

We tried a new treat around the campfire this time.  It's called Woofum's.  (we called them "doughboys" when I was growing up).  You take refrigerator biscuits and wrap them around a 1" diameter wooden dowel, and cook it over the fire.  When it's done you pull it off and have a nice cup made out of roll, that you fill with honey, or cherry pie filling, whipped cream, pudding, etc.  It was a hit!  We went through 6 packs of refrigerator biscuits!

Diamond Fork Hot Springs Campout

We did our annual November Hot Springs Campout this year at Diamond Fork Hot Springs.  When we go there, we typically camp at the campgrounds nearby, and hike up to the springs Saturday morning early.  But this year there were so many scout groups camping nearby, that we were afraid there wouldn't be any room in the springs when we got there in the morning.  Other troops do the same thing, going up in the morning.
So we got camp setup, and had dinner, then we drove to the trailhead and hiked the 2 miles to the springs in the evening.  We got there around 8pm, and pretty much had the place to ourselves till around 9:30 when the night life co'ed's started coming.  By then we had gotten out and were changed and ready to hike back home!  (good thing too since the newcomers weren't dressed as modestly as we would like, and lit up smokes as soon as they got there).

2 of the pools at Diamond Fork

So we hiked back down to the trailhead and drove back to camp.  Back at camp, our neighbor in the campground had a tent trailer, and was apparently cold, cause he had his very loud generator running almost the whole night!  So we didn't worry about staying up till midnight roasting twinkies around the fire, we could barely hear ourselves over the generator, we weren't keeping anyone else awake.
Saturday morning we got up, cleaned up camp, had breakfast, and played a game of ultima frisbee before driving home - all the while glad that we were done with the hot springs and didn't have to fight the other scout troops that were heading up there for a spot!