Bear Lake Vacation - Day Two - Family and Friends

I'd wanted to camp at Rendezvous Beach because it was the best place for shade at Bear Lake. And we did have a shady campsite - in the evening. In the morning we were at the mercy of the sun as soon as it rose. And that meant the kids were awake with the sun. It wasn't even 6:00. 

I told the kids that quiet hours didn't end til 7:00 so they needed to stay in the tent until 7:00. I got out The Hobbit and finished Chapter 1. At 7:00 we got out of the tent and had breakfast. We had a pretty simple breakfast planned. We'd just brought milk and the pre-packaged cereal bowls. I'm glad we did something simple because we all just wanted to be at the water. 

The kids were in their swimming suits and down to the water by 7:30.  And really, with a beach like this only a few steps from your campsite wouldn't you be down there as soon as you could too?

I have a lot of pictures like this. Get used to it. 

See, I told you. It was just so magical to walk down the path and see the beach and the lake all spread out below us. 

Derrick wasted not time getting into the water. 

This is Lydia. 

Here's Veronica working on a castle. 

And all of them in the water. They were still pretty leery of going too far from shore. Later, when other swimmers were in the water, I'd point out that they were still standing even though they were far from shore. But for now the kids were afraid there would be a sudden drop off. 

They went back and forth between the water and the sand. 

Here's Lydia building a sand castle. 

I like how the sand makes these cool shapes. 

Derrick loved the water. He's basically a fish.

Charlotte and Lydia worked together on this castle and mote for a while. 

And here I am. I was in my swimming suit. But the water never really warmed up enough for me to get into it that morning. Brandon and I bought camp chairs down and sat in those and talked. 

An airplane flew over like 80 feet above the beach. That's totally illegal so Brandon took a picture and we googled the number for where to report it. But the office was closed until probably after the 4th so I don't think anyone will care.

Here are the kids getting a little braver. 

At 10:30 I went up to the bathroom and took a shower. That was lovely.  Brandon had all the kids get out of the water at 11:00 and then showered off.  

Then we had a snack while they dried off. 

Everyone changed into regular clothes and we started driving to Logan. This part of our trip was added a little late in the plan. Logan is a complicated place for our family. On the one hand we have good memories there because Brandon and I met there and lived there the first three years we were married. But on the other hand we have bad memories because the USU flight program was a terrible experience for Brandon and we felt very stuck in Logan until he graduated with an interdisciplinary degree in 2010.

Also out of the 10 or so times we've gone back to Logan since we've moved it's snowed about 50 percent of the time. Even at times of the year when you wouldn't expect snow like May or October it snowed. Our last 3 visits in 2019, 2017, and 2016 all involved either snow or ridiculously cold weather. The weather has not helped Logan redeem itself in our memories.  

So at first I was content to just ignore Logan and focus on Bear Lake. But then two little seeds that were planted a while ago bore fruit. 

Seed #1 was a Facebook group I created over a decade ago for all the people who had been in our married student ward in Logan. It was a fun way to keep in contact and we set up a few reunions in 2011 and 2012. The group went silent about 10 years ago and frankly, I forgot about it. But a few weeks ago one of our old friends got in the group and posted that she and her family were going to be in Utah and wanted to meet up. 

It just so happened that the date of the Logan meet up would be Saturday July 1st which would be when we were at Bear Lake. I decided that we might as well make the drive through the canyon to see some of our old friends. 

That reminded me of Seed #2. Last year my Aunt Vera set up weekly video meet ups with my grandma, aunts, uncles, and cousins. We didn't make it onto the calls every week, but we were usually on there about once a month. One time my Aunt Karen was drinking rootbeer while she was on the call. She was talking about her brand new house in Logan and reminding us that we were invited to come for a visit. Derrick wanted to know if she would have root beer for him. She said that she would make sure she did. 

I decided that if we were going to be in Logan we should stop and see my Aunt Karen and her new house.  So I messaged her and asked if we could come.  Not only did she say we could come, but she said she'd feed us lunch. 

So her house was our first stop in Logan. It's a lovely house. As we drove up to it I told the kids, "This house is super new. Like it was just finished in the last two years. You need to be super good in it."  They all were.  And they all loved the tour of the house with all it's cool stuff.  (It literally has an elevator.)

Karen had lunch all ready for us when we got there.  There was lots of rootbeer because she remembered her promise to Derrick. She had orange chicken all ready for us and some other Asian food. The kids LOVED it. And Charlotte and Lydia casually ate with chopsticks like pros. 

Her house was so lovely and so cozy. She had three guest bedrooms and some of the kids were eyeing those beds like, "Do we really have to go back and sleep in a tent tonight."

Brandon fell asleep on the living room couch and Lydia fell asleep on this chair. 

At 3:00 it was time to go.  Karen sent us off with one last treat.  Root beer flavored shelf milk from Gosners. The kids were all super curious about that. 

We went to Aggie Ice Cream and got there just before a large group of people showed up. I was glad we didn't have to wait in line behind them, but having that big group made me jittery and I felt kind of rushed as I ordered.  So I was surprised when the "single scoop cone" really came with what looked like two scoops.  They ice cream scooping people even said we could get two flavors. That was kind of amazing. 

And when I paid it was only like $26 dollars.  When Brandon and I lived in Logan we were so poor that Aggie Ice Cream always felt expensive. But now I was like, "Oh wow this is such a good deal."  We have paid WAY more than that for WAY less ice cream at other places. 

Here's Derrick posing with an ice cream cone cut out. 

Then we drove around the USU campus and by our old apartments. Here's where Brandon lived when I met him and where we lived when we were first married. 

It's so crazy to think we started out here. That seems like ancient history. 

And here's the townhouse we lived in the second and third year we were married. 

We also drove by the airport. It was weird driving around the city. It felt familiar and I remembered a few things, but there was also a lot of stuff that I didn't remember.  And I'm not talking about stuff that's new. There was just a lot that I didn't remember. Normally I have a pretty good internal GPS. But I must have deleted all my Logan files. I couldn't remember a lot of the city. 

We went up to the park where the Pumpkin Walk happens. (I had to use the google maps to find it.) That's where we were meeting up with our student ward friends. We were supposed to meet at the pavilion, but I didn't recognize anyone there.  The last time I saw any of these people in person was in 2012 so it's been a while. I was like, "We should have all planned to wear the same color or something." 

And then all of a sudden my friend Christina was walking toward our car. I was like, "Oh my goodness!"  We got out of the car and she was pointing out her kids to me. She pointed to the bench where her husband and some lady were sitting she said, "That's Amy."  I was like, "No way, I thought that was just some women you were friends with." I could not believe that Baby Amy is now a teenager.

Soon we saw Lina show up with her family. And then Megan, and Martha, and Marcie. There husbands and kids were there too. I'm friends with all these people on Facebook, but it was just surreal to suddenly see them in real life. I was like, "I kind of thought you all just lived in my computer."

We talked and took a group picture (which I still need to track down.) My favorite thing was watching our kids talk. Lina had brought her dog so my kids were crowded around the dog talking with Lina's oldest daughter. And later they talked with one of Christina's girls. Veronica kept saying, "Can we see them again sometime?"

Everyone else had brought food for dinner and we had some stuff we could have shared too, but my kids were all starting to ask me when we were going back to camp.  So we decided to skip out a little before dinner. But it was still wonderful to have seen all those people. 

There were other people we could have seen in Logan. And if you are reading this, I'm sorry we didn't make plans to see you. I didn't want to over schedule our day with lots of stops. As it was we were already at about 5:00 and anxious to get back to the beach. 

We drove to Smiths Market Place and I went inside to grab some food that we'd have for breakfast the next morning. It was supposed to be a quick trip inside, but I walked in and immediately realized I had a problem. I didn't remember that store at all either. So it took me a little longer than it should have to buy the 8 or so things I went in for. 

Then we drove back up the canyon to Bear Lake. On the way we talked about how maybe Logan wasn't such a bad place after all.  Enough time had passed that the sting of all the bad memories had worn off. We decided that we needed to come back for a visit just to Logan sometime. (In the summer so we didn't have to worry about snow.)

We stopped at a rest stop with a view of the lake. The kids and Brandon started singing ""I can see my campsite" to the tune of "I can make your hands clap." That was funny.

Oh speaking of music, we heard Flowers by Miley Cyrus about a billion times on this trip. We also heard Karma is My Boy Friend by Taylor Swift a lot. 

The chorus to Flowers goes like this:

I can buy myself flowers
Write my name in the sand
Talk to myself for hours
Say things you don't understand
I can take myself dancing
And I can hold my own hand
Yeah, I can love me better than you can

At one point Brandon asked me if I could buy myself flowers. I was like, "yeah, before I met you I worked really hard to learn how to make myself happy so that I wasn't relying on a relationship to make me happy. When I met you I was able to just keep being happy with you. But I didn't need you."

He agreed with that, but that was enough seriousness so I wanted to make a joke.  I told him, "this is how the song would go if I wrote it:

I can't buy my own cellphone

Can't replace the SD card

I don't know how to fix an alternator

No clue how update my computer

I can't fix things,

But you can

He laughed at that.

Back at our campsite there had been quite the cottonwood seed snowstorm.  

It was all over the ground. 

The kids got back into their swimming suits and I went down to the beach with them. Brandon set up the camp stove and heated up chili. We had that with Freetos. We are not foodies when we camp. We like simple meals and this one is always a favorite. The kids ate so fast. 

Then it was back down to the beach.

Derrick and Veronica were all over the water. 

We stayed down there as the sun set. 

Here's Veronica loving the boogie board.  We'd brought the same two boards that we bought in Alabama in 2016. These also came with us to our last Bear Lake visit. They've been getting older over the years and I didn't think they'd survive this trip. But they held up well enough. 

Here's a look back at the beach from the water. I was still surprised at how empty the beach was. Maybe more people had been there during the day, but we had it to ourselves again this evening. 

Here's Derrick and Veronica playing in the water. 

The sun set with a bunch of clouds in the sky. The clouds looked a little stormy, but they were out over the water and didn't come toward us, so we didn't worry about them too much. 

Derrick and Veronica were in the water until the sun set at 8:40. 

The sun had gone down, but there was still a lot of twilight. We went up to the campsite and changed into pajamas. Brandon built a fire so we could roast marshmallows. 

Here's Charlotte with the fire. 

We had a good time talking for a while. 

There were a lot of fireworks going off near Lake Town and Derrick was getting nervous. I took him up to the bathroom so he could brush his teeth. While we were there everything got really windy.  The cottonwood seeds kicked up and looked like a snow storm. 

Brandon had been telling funny stories to the girls, but when the storm picked up he'd sent them all to the bathroom to brush their teeth. He could see big dark clouds coming over the mountain and heading toward us. 

He started securing everything around the campsite. He tied the canopy to the picnic table and he tightened the rain fly on our tent. I was in the tent helping everyone get ready for bed. I'd brough melatonin for Veronica, but everyone ended up wanting some. I guess most of the kids hadn't slept very well the night before so they wanted help sleeping through the night this night. 

Derrick was so scared from all the fireworks and the wind. I got him into his sleeping bag. We had his nose cancelling headphones pack for the fireworks on Tuesday so I got those out and put them on him. Those helped a lot. He snuggled down in his sleeping bag and didn't make a sound the rest of the night. 

Veronica is the only person in our family who still has one of the not so great sleeping bags. I'd meant to buy her a good one like everyone else, but I'd forgot to do it before this trip. She'd been cold the night before in that old, less than quality bag. So this night I made sure to really wrap her up well in our travel blankets. I put one under her and one over her and wrapped one around her feet. Then I zipped the bag all around her.  It also helped that she wasn't going to bed with wet hair this night. So she slept really well too. 

Charlotte and Lydia stayed awake a little longer. I tried reading them The Hobbit, but the wind was so strong we gave up on that. Brandon came into the tent just as it started raining outside. We were really for a really bad storm squall (we'd been though a bad one when we camped near the beach at St Andrew's state park in Florida), but a squall never came. The wind actually let up when the rain started. It rained really hard for a while and then petered out. 

I thought I was hearing the wind in the trees, but then I realized I was hearing the WAVES. We were close enough to the shore that we were hearing the water going back and forth on the beach as the wind blew it. That was such a nice sound to fall asleep to. 

Once again I was so happy that we had this campsite. I still was a dream come true.