Camping

T and I are about to celebrate our second wedding anniversary this week, so we decided to go camping for the first time in our five-plus years together.  The planning stage was interesting, since we come from two very different camping backgrounds.

I went camping for the first time when I was about 5 or 6 with my best friend, Sara, and her family.  I remember staying overnight, roasting marshmallows, and sleeping in an RV.  The next time I went camping was when I was in college.  And then I think there was another gap of about 5 years before I went again.  I finally started camping on a regular basis when I was first living in California, as I hung out with my kayaker friends most weekends during the summer.  I learned to camp at this point in my life from a hardcore backpacker, so I was taught to take as little with me as possible, pick a spot in the middle of nowhere and camp for free, look down on RVs and campsites as not "real camping," and bring food that you can cook in a single pot on a folding backpacker's stove.

Cara keeping watch for squirrels

T, on the other hand, has had a lot of experience camping from childhood onward, and almost all of it in trailers, campers and fifth wheels.  His philosophy is, he loves the great outdoors, but why not be comfortable while you're there?  And, as it turns out, I think I like that philosophy a little better.  (Maybe it's because I'm not quite as young and tough as I used to be.)  We basically split the difference -- stay at a campsite, sleep in a tent, buy a comfortable air mattress, bring a borrowed two-burner stove and try to cook decent meals.

Marshmallows!

We drove up to a campsite near the Smith and Moorehouse Reservoir on Thursday afternoon, and found a nice spot that had a large clearing heading back from out parking area.  Fortunately the fire danger was set at yellow, so we could still have a campfire, as long as it was in the official fire ring. 

The creek

We set up our tent on a flat spot in the shade, and watched the dogs run in a triangle from tree to tree for hours as tiny, cute red squirrels told them off in turn.  Diezel was also chasing butterfly shadows (yes, he prefers the shadows to the butterflies themselves), and hunting flies and bees, which he snaps out of the air and kills with his front teeth.  Cara didn't care about the butterflies, but she was very concerned about the flies and bees -- she spent most of her time underfoot, tripping us as she tried to keep her butt protected up against our legs so the bugs couldn't land on it.  We don't know why she feels this way about bugs -- we've never seen her get stung by a bee, but it seems like one of them must have gotten her in the backside at some point, based on her paranoia about protecting her butt.  T and I hung out, reading our respective books, and then got some firewood from the campsite host.  T built a fire while I cooked us a one-pot dinner, and then for dessert we roasted marshmallows. 

The reservoir

And that was how we spent two days.  Reading, relaxing, chasing chipmunks and butterflies.  We did go down to the reservoir a few times and let the dogs splash around, and we also followed a trail that ran through our site and back to a creek that wound its way through the campground.  Diezel hurt his ankle as we walked along the creek, so he was a little more mellow the second day, but that was about it.  The nights were quite chilly, and our sleeping arangements weren't the most comfortable, so we were pretty sleepy by the second day, but otherwise it was splendid.

Diezel was cracking us up most of the trip with his chipmunk and butterfly antics, but the funniest moment was when he decided that he wanted to turn a pine sapling on the edge of camp into his bed.  He tried several times to ruck the poor thing's lowest branches into a shape that he wanted them to be in so that he could lay on them.  He was so funny, and tried it so often, we were actually able to catch it on tape.

Eventually he was successful, and we were able to immortalize that on camera too.

Diezel in his pine bough bed

Cara decided on day two that the safest place to keep her butt fly-free was the tent.  She started trying to shove her way in while it was zipped up in the morning, and after a family afternoon nap in the tent, we gave in and just left the lower corner of the door unzipped for her.  She would come out for a few minutes, and then something would touch her butt, and she would jump up, spin around, and run back into the tent.  Unfortunately, we didn't manage to get that on tape, but it was sadly hilarious.

But the best part of the trip was the unexpected wildlife.  Friday morning, while I was in the camp toilet, a baby moose wandered down the middle of the road.  As I came out, I saw a mom showing her kids something in the trees, but I didn't see a thing.  T got as good look, however, and was impressed by the little guy.  Then that evening, as we were sitting around reading, T all of a sudden turned to me and said, "Um...?"  When I looked over at him, a full-size moose was standing about 6 feet away from him.  It looked at us as if to say, "So sorry, I had no idea this site was already taken..." and then took off across the road and into the trees.  The dogs really wanted to chase it once it was going, but we managed to keep them back.  T said he and the moose were looking at each other in surprise for several seconds before he got my attention.  I only wish I could have gotten a photo of that!

Now we just need to figure out when we can go camping again.  And wonder to ourselves, what took us so long to go in the first place?

Garden Update

Well, it's been a month since we started our garden, and things are going pretty well.  We used grass clippings as mulch, as suggested by our local gardening extension.  It was slow at first, but I've seen some real signs of growth recently.

We have the first baby tomatoes making an appearance on one of our cherry tomato plants!

And the cabbages and broccoli are looking surprisingly good so far.  The zucchini is starting to really take off -- it's by far the happiest plant in the garden.

red cabbage

zucchini

Some of the plants seemed to be getting a little brown around the edges -- mostly the cukes and the hubbard squash, although it happened to some of the tomatoes as well.  I was afraid they were getting too much sun, but there's not much I can do about that.  I now know we picked some cool-weather veggies that just might not do well in our hot summers, with just a little morning shade from our fence.  And now some of those leaves look like there were getting nibbled on.  But the newer leaves seem to be in good shape, so I'm not too worried yet.

holey cucumber

squash



tomato leaves -- old and new

The biggest thing that confuses me is that there seem to be some major disparities in the sizes of plants of the same variety.  There were some differences when we planted them, I guess, but it just seems much more pronounced now.

broccoli plants

cherry tomatoes

I went ahead and fed them today, so I'm hoping to see a growth spurt soon.  I also adjusted the watering on the tomatoes, because I don;t think they were getting enough.  If anyone with more gardening experience wants to pass along some tips or let me know if we seem to be doing something wrong, please let me know!  *smile*

SLC Farmer's Market

So we finally made it to the SLC Farmer's Market and Arts & Crafts Fair this weekend, with the prompting of a few friends who invited us to come along with them.  It was bigger than any market I've been to before, and they actually do market it as an arts & crafts fair as well, which it certainly is. 

It's a little early in the growing season here, so there wasn't a lot of produce for sale, but there were plant starts and flowers, honey, and locally produced goodies like artisanal breads and bottled sauces.  But the farm offerings were definitely outnumbered by the booths of handmade jewelry, art, crafts, clothes and decorations.  There was a row of food stalls that included everything from Indian to Middle Eastern to pizza to crepes to Ecuadorean to Thai food, as well as a number of spots to buy something to stay hydrated.  We had Italian sausage sandwiches for lunch, which were grilled and then dunked in an amazing pesto sauce, and snacked on fresh, hot kettle corn, but the best thing we had all day was fresh mint limeade -- it was like a mojito, but without the rum.  Yum! 

There were performers, all wearing nametags that said "Official Busker," including a little boy of 8 or 9 playing the fiddle, a group of guys who have an upright piano that they haul around in a custom bike trailer, and a boy who was playing plastic buckets in lieu of drums.  There was a guy wandering around on stilts who made balloon animals for the kids.  And with a small dog park right next door to the market, there were tons of dogs, from a huge, shaggy wolfhound to a tiny, sleeping dachschund puppy.

I've been to a number of farmer's markets over the years, and the ratio of produce to prepared food to entertainment always varies.  In Arcata, CA, the outer ring of the Plaza is dedicated to produce from all the great farms in the area, including some flowers and plants, but the inside of the square is all about performers and people hanging out on blankets.  In Moscow, ID, there's a long double-row of produce, and a row of prepared food, with no entertainment that I can remember.  In Redding, CA, there was a single row of produce stalls sitting out in the baking sun.  Maybe it will be different later in the summer, but right now, this market felt like it was 90% craft fair, 5% food, and 5% farmers.

The other nice thing about this market was the variety of people who were there.  Living in the suburbs of SLC, it often starts to feel like everyone fits the conservative, white Utahn mold.  But the market definitely draws out the artsy-craftsy, hippie-dippy, earthy-crunchy element that makes up a big part of SLC's core.  And that always makes me feel a little more at home here in Utah.