A to Z Challenge: Uinta Mountains

Photo Source, Butterfly Lake, Uinta Mountains

Both DH and I grew up hiking and fishing and camping in the Uinta Mountains near our homes long before the summer we met.  Scout camps and Young Women's camps were usually held somewhere in this mountain range, and we both attended such camps almost every summer of our teenage years.  So, of course, our courtship had to include hiking, camping, and picnicking in the Unitas.

I believe that it was the summer that I spent in Colombia when my extended family first began the tradition of a family reunion campout in the Uintas.   I was not there, but DH may have attended?  I don't even remember.   However, when I returned in 1983 and we became engaged to be married, we were both able to attend the family campout.  With the myriad of parents, siblings with their spouses and children, and many other aunts and uncles and cousins, we were very well chaperoned.

 Doing the dishes and sleeping

Because we moved out of state shortly before the family campout the next summer, we were not able to attend the reunion together again in the Uintas.  By the time we moved back to the state, the family had abandoned sleeping in tents and trailers in favor of a huge family get together renting a large lodge complete with beds and a modern kitchen located near Mount Timpanogos.   My immediate extended family did camp out in the Uintas another time or two, and we and our children joined them, even when I was fairly pregnant with DD4 in 1995.   We still do try to take a day trip up for a picnic or short hike in the beautiful Uinta Mountains at least once every year or two, even if now the drive is perhaps more enjoyable than the hike.

My very pregnant self with siblings and parents, Uinta family campout July 1995

Timp Lodge 2008

Where are your favorite places to hike and camp and fish?