Mirror Lake Camp Out

I had gone all summer just about without going camping. I could not have that. I feel like my summer is not complete unless I have gone camping at least once. This particular weekend, camping was really needed because drama had been going on at work, I just needed to get away from the house, turn off my phone and be with some friends out in nature. Thankfully my friends Brent and Brian (guys in my ward that I have been having dinner group with every Sunday with all summer) and I had planned a trip that weekend and had been talking about it for a while, and we finally were making it happen, which was perfect timing for me. :o) We were just going to go by ourselves, but then we discovered some other people in the ward and a few other random people were going to Mirror Lake up in Heber Valley camping. So we decided to just join with them. It was fun to have a big group, but
there are some major set backs to having that many people as well. The night did NOT go as I thought it would. First of all, we were supposed to leave at 5:30 pm and it takes an hour and a half drive to get there. We did not end up leaving until almost 7 pm. Just a side note, I did not know that we would leave so late, so I did not eat dinner, I only packed a tin foil dinner to eat once we got to our camp site and set up a fire. So after being on the road for a while, we stoped in Heber to get some food. This would have been fine had I brought money to eat and had we not stopped for an HOUR! This put us back even more and I was starting to get really hungry. Then, the girl that put together the camping trip failed to mention that she didn't know how to get where we were going, so we got lost and turned around several times. When we finally reached our destination, it was dark. The girl that put together the trip had told us it would be a 2 mile hike until we got to the lake, when we got there the sign at the head of the trail told us it would be 5 miles! This wouldn't bother me so much if I were not so hungry. I mean, it was late, and I was tired and hungry and they are telling me I have to hike 5 miles before I get to eat and sit down. I wasn't sure if I was capable of hiking that far with a 40 lbs backpack on with no food in me. But away we went. I was probably the slowest in the group because of that, but Brent was a sweetheart and stayed behind with me to keep me company and to try and cheer me up and make me laugh. He was great. People saw that I wasn't doing too well and when we would stop to rest people would give me some of the food they had. One guy gave me banana chips and I told them they were the best tasting thing in the world. He knew I must have nothing in me and gave me more and started calling me banana chip girl because he didn't remember my name. By the time we finally got to where we were going to camp and set up and got a fire going it was 2 am. I had been talking about my tin foil dinner for hours and was SO excited that I finally got to eat it. It was such a great meal. We all had fun chatting and eating around the fire and around 4 am decided to head to bed after hanging our food from a high branch (so the bears would not get it). The branch ended up braking anyway. which scared the crap out of me, so that was pretty much pointless, luckily we didn't have any bear visitors that night. I slept in a little two man tent with a girl that I had just met and we basically had to sleep cuddling because it was so small, but it was fine, I didn't sleep much anyway, it was not comfortable. Next day we got up, had the fire going, Brent hiked in with a dutch oven, eggs, bacon, buiscuts, and who knows what else. Needless to say we had a pretty decent breakfast, packed up our stuff and then hiked back out. I was ahead for most of the hike back, go figure. It is amazing was some food and rest can do for you. It was a beautiful area, which I had no idea on the way in because it was pitch black. Anyway, although it was a little rocky, overall it was an awesome weekend, I had a blast. :o) A little camping is good for the soul.