U/C Trip - Day 2, Where's the lake?

 Our original plan was to drive from Olathe, Kansas AAAAALLLL the way to Vernal, Utah on the first day. I say "day" but that kind of drive has you leaving in the dark and arriving in the dark. Waze says it's a 14 hour drive...but Waze doesn't calculate how small our bladders are OR how badly we need to pick out another treat at each gas station. That adds at least another 2 hours.  16 hours on the road. NO BUENO. 

And that's not the half of it..(actually, that is the half of it)....the other half of the plan was to wake up super fluper early and have Mark drop me, Laney, Anna and Everly off at Moon Lake and then make the 7 hour drive up to get Mathew, and turn back around and get to the cabin hopefully by dinner. Sounds good for me, right? Until you remember that this is the Uintahs. 6 am is chilly and we wouldn't be able to get in the cabin until 3 pm. That would leave us wandering about in the woods for 7 hours. And still...I'd take that before wanting to do the drive up to Rexburg and back. 

 But then! My brother, Jordan, saved the day and offered to pick Mathew up from school on his way down from Weiser, ID. 

SALVATION!

The drive from Aurora to Moon Lake was beautiful. 

Our bag of Kansas chips finally popped in Empire, Colorado. So that was exciting!

We were sad to see all the charred trees from last year's fires that burned out a large swath of Ashley National Forest. Luckily, the flames stopped just of Moon Lake Resort. 

But the water was so low. Where did our Lake go? Last time we were here, the water was so high, we only had about 8 feet of beach to play on. This year, we have entire stream beds and grassy fields that used to be the bottom of the lake. So strange. 

I remember a couple of times as a kid when the water would get this low. I didn't know to be concerned back then. Hopefully, next year will bring more snow in the mountains. 

After we got settled in our cabins, greeted and hugged everyone, we made our goofy dinner of canned soup and instant rice and hustled over to Grandma's campfire to chat and sing. 

Mark and Johnny always sounding cool.

Laney and Thomas catching up on their mutual love of dragons!

And my favorite....glowing, happy, loud, laughing cousins...reunited!

Totally worth the drive and the rain and the road food and the redbox and gas money and the wear and tear on the van....

This is what it's about!