Hannagen Meadow Part1: Camping with our little family.

On July 30th, we packed up all our camping gear, plus more for the following days at Hannagen Meadow Lodge, and left Maricopa at 9 AM. We stopped at Best Buy in chandler to get a Mini DV for our Video Camera. We then made our way to Payson, where we stopped to eat lunch and take a potty break at Mcdonald's. We visited Safeway next to buy food for our campout that night. We though we might camp in Payson for the night, but it was 95 degrees there! So, we kept driving. When we got to Sholow, we thought we might camp there, but it was still 90 degrees! So, we stopped at Walmart to buy more food for our weekend at the lodge. (that's the next post) and took a potty break again. We made it to Greer and it was still hot there.....SO we decided to just drive until it got to at least 70 degrees. Like we thought it might be, it didn't hit 75 degrees until we got to Hannagens Meadow so we finally made it there..........at........6 PM!!!! That's the reason I wrote everything we did, because we turned a 5 hour trip into an 8 hour trip. We could have added one more hour and made it to Utah! Anyways, my point is, when you are driving with kids, plan alot more time just to get there! Anyhoo, Hannagens Meadow is in the White Mountains and it sits at the highest point at 9000+ feet elevation. Hannagens Meadow Lodge has been around since about 1926 and is currently owned by my Uncle Larry Innes. It's SO beautiful. WE planned on attending the 1st Annual Don Innes Family Reunion on Thursday 31st through Saturday 2nd. So we decided to go up a day early on Wednesday and have a vacation with our kids. Let me just say that camping with 3 kids is not a vacation....NO sirree. Here is Malin and Savannah standing next to the tent they just put together. We put another smaller one right next to it, with the doors facing each other, and that's where Savannah and Aubrey slept. Surprisingly, they slept all night! Never got cold at all! Baby Malin and Aubrey where so glad to finally get out of the car. They had fun playing pretend in the forest. Baby Malin loved his little shovel. Aubrey loved her own camping chair. BYU baby filling his tractor with pine needles. Cute.... On the 31st we went fishing in the Black River. IT was breathtaking. Malin didn't have much luck because the water was a little too fast. We found out later that we didn't go down the river far enough where the reserve was. Bummer. It was still a beautiful drive though. Savannah found a lizard doing pushups on the bridge. She isn't very happy in this picture because we told her she had to get back in the car.....what little kid wants to get in a car when you are in the mountains?

Dad and the girls next to the Black River

Aubrey, Mommy and Savannah reading books and coloring while daddy fished. Baby Malin is asleep in the car not too far from us. We also got a kickout out of hide and seek. The girls hid and daddy found them. Savannah hid by the river and made bird sounds to distract daddy. It was pretty funny. We camped by an LDS family from Mesa. They had six kids ages, 19, 18, 17, 16, 14 and 13. WO! Crazy! and only one girl! They were very nice. They gave the kids some glow sticks too. We packed up about 1pm and then took a drive to Alpine to eat lunch. While we there we spotted 20 elk in the middle of a pasture right smack dab in the middle of Alpine! Malin wanted to go Elk hunting.......right there. After eating we made our way back to Hannagens Meadow Lodge to meet the family and start the family Reunion! See next post for full details and pictures!