Western States Traditional Rendezvous

View from the kids range, this wasn't even half the people camped there.

Our "condominum" as the guys from Oregon called our camp site.

Clayton helping Evelyn shoot the raccoon on the kids range. Clayton didn't get the picture, because Evelyn took the arrow out too fast, but she smoked the panther!

Hot!

Monty loved all the other dogs that were there. He's such a good boy, he never barks unlike some doggies...

Look what I found!

Evelyn caught a butterfly

Kids pinata (sorry it's blurry, it was pouring but you get the idea of only slightly controlled chaos!)

Evelyn getting some candy

Candy!

Stella just hanging out while we packed up camp

The trip home. I just love how she fell asleep.

Why is it that when you go camping it's a requirement that you forget something vital for the survival and sanity of the trip? It might not happen to you but it usually happens to us.

We packed up everything (or so we thought) of importance and even a few things that were not so important and headed out Thursday afternoon. It's amazing how much more "stuff" you need when you have kids thrown into the mix!

After stopping by the store to get the requisite odwalla and sushi to start all our camping trips and ice for the coolers we headed out I84 for Twin Falls and the Magic Mountain ski resort (resort?? well that's a bit of a stretch...) where this years Western States Traditional Rendezvous was being held.

Everything was great, the kids were only slightly cranky, sure it was later than we'd hoped to be leaving (3:30 in the afternoon) but we'd get there before dark, so that was a plus. About half way there Evelyn says that she doesn't feel very well and then threw up, and not just a little. I'm so glad that she had that bright orange odwalla, and sushi...We calmly (mostly) pulled over to the side of the highway and tried to clean up as best we could. Unfortuantly for us we got to smell that for another hour and a half. Oh joy. We finally get there with our sense of smell deaded and ask Blake the president of the Idaho Traditional Bowhunters (and the organizer of this years rendezvous) where we should camp after apologizing for the odiferous state of our truck. "yeah, I can smell that a little, hey look a fly" We get the tent unloaded and set up and as we're getting ready to set up the beds we realize that we don't have the air pump...uh oh. Clayton goes in search of one and pretty soon I hear, "You better start blowing!" Great, it's going to be a long night. We get the girls asleep and try to sleep on the lumpy ground, and it starts to get alot colder than we were thinking low 50's my foot! I grab Stella and put her in my sleeping bag.

The next day we get the rest of camp set up. It's always amazing to me how fast kids can make friends. I lvoe that. Evelyn found a great family from California to play with, they had 4 kids, Sierra, Kodiak (Cody), Dakota, Cheyanne, and their dog Sitka. After the meeting we decided it was time to head into Twin to find an air pump, and a laundry matt. The truck was ripe!

I'm pretty sure I was the only one in that laundry mat that spoke English. We had a great time watching Spanish soap operas, though! And now the truck smelled Vanilla fresh.

A ton of people showed up, and there were lots of vendors selling bows. I even got to try one out. Evelyn had fun shooting her bow at the kids range, Clayton went up the terrifying ski lift (really? You call that thing a ski lift???) to shoot both sides a couple of times. We met some great people from all over. Luckily for us, because the weather man is a big fat liar! the people camped next to us from Oregon had a wall tent with a stove and graciously let us warm up! They invited Clayton over Saturday night and he had a great time swapping hunting stories with those old timers! They even invited us to the shoot in La Grande, OR in a couple of weeks. Saturday and sunday night's it poured! They had a kids pinata shoot Sunday night. Clayton tried to stand over Evelyn to keep her mostly dry, despite the rain, she had a gret time. We were lucky that it cleared up during the days. We had fun checking to see if we won anything in the raffle. We got a traditional bowhunter shirt. Evey time we'd stop by the 'lodge' to look Evelyn would get something out of the kids box.

Monday we packed up and headed home. I think that that was the best shower I have ever had! 4 days worth of camping dirt is Nasty! We had a great time and hopefully we'll be able to go to next years Rendezvous, maybe by then I'll have my own bow.