Family Vacation – American Fork Canyon

Here is an interesting riddle for you. I have more pictures of my family's camping trip to American Fork Canyon than I do of any other family vacation. Yet I have fewer memories. I'm open to theories as to why that is.

I think I don't remember much because we didn't do much during the camping trip. We drove there, we set up camp, then we stayed there for a few days, took down camp, and went home. My sister's friend, Khan, came and stayed one night with us. And it rained a lot. The end. Okay there are a few other things that I remember, but I'm not kidding when I say that I don't remember much. I don't even remember what month we went camping. Process of elimination says the end of June, but I'm not sure about that.


I do remember that it rained. Ever since my first year of girls camp I haven't enjoyed camping in the rain. Nothing is more depressing than a soggy tent. At one point during the camping trip my siblings and I turned the inside of the van into an RV type atmosphere. The van was a 15 passenger van that was over 20 years old. The first of the three rows of seats had long ago been removed. We used that space to set up a little eating area in our “RV” We even put up curtains somehow. We liked hanging out in there better than our tents or under the trees.

I was pretty moody during the trip. Being 15 will do that to a girl. I remember hanging out by myself at a spot that overlooked the American Fork River. I didn't enjoy being suck with my family for such a long period of time.

I did hang out with them enough to have some memories of having fun. We all enjoyed playing Lincoln Logs together. I was 15, Lindsey was 13, Emily was 11, Billy was 9 and Hillary was 7. We would spend about an hour assembling a Lincoln log fortress. Then we would say, “there is Fort Courage off in the distance.” Then we would pummel our structures by catapulting small Lincoln logs at them.
Like the year before we had two tents. The big spring-bar tent – which was possibly older than the van – was for us kids. Mom and dad had the smaller tent that we still hadn't quite figured out how to put together. I remember laying in there reading a book with my dad. While he read the book to me I looked at the saggy tent and tried to figure out how it really went up.

On the last night my dad, Emily, and I stayed up late and burned a huge log. We talked and laughed and had a good time.

Here's one more memory that maybe I shouldn't share, but hey those of you who are still reading deserve some reward. Emily and Billy decided that they should have a contest to see who could become the smelliest. The contest escalated to the point where Emily was wearing a table cloth and Billy was wearing his t-shirt upside down. They both had the rest of their clothes hanging from sticks over the fire. Pictures are available upon request :)

I think that my parents learned that we were getting to old to just sit around a campground for a week. Hanging out had worked well when we were in elementary school but we needed entertainment now that we were older. Our next three family vacations were ones where we went somewhere with something to do. I guess between the rain, the moody oldest daughters, and the wanna be nudists my parents weren't going to take chances with just sitting around.