The Rain in Spain or The Monsoon in the Mountains

I realize my secondary title doesn't rhyme like the first one does, although we have been singing that song around here often lately -- Justin won the role of Henry Higgins in HCT West Valley's production of "My Fair Lady" this fall. But rain or monsoon, we had quite a soggy time on our annual Wyoming camping trip.

It didn't start out that way. Evan was excited to try out his new waders. I think the boys need to get some proper wader boots rather than trying to stuff their feet into old tennis shoes:

Justin is familiar with most stretches of Grey's River. He's fished this river since he was a lad. This year the river was incredibly high, especially for this time of year. We had no luck at our usual holes with bait, so we tried fishing the upper stretches where only artificial lures are allowed. It's a very different technique than fishing with bait. I lost an awesome fish because I was using the wrong method. Grrr.

This hole is known as the Bee Hole. Justin hadn't fished it since he was a boy, when he came with his dad and one of his younger brothers. The hole is quite some miles up the canyon on dirt roads, and when his dad discovered neither boy remembered the bait (to this day each man insists it was the other brother who forgot the bait), he pulled an old, scraggly bee pattern lure off his hat and managed to catch a fish with it here. When they opened up that fish they found it had just taken a grasshopper. Using that as bait they caught another fish with better bait inside it. And thus was born the Legend of the Bee. We didn't have any luck here. The fish kept flirting with Owen's and Justin's casts, but they weren't interested in a long-term relationship.
This was a new stretch Justin hadn't fished before. It looked promising, but we didn't catch anything.

Liam collected all of these seed pods from a houndstooth plant. He discovered they cling like velcro to clothes. I got decorated while making sandwiches for lunch.

Our success from one day's fishing -- and it was hard going! Bronwyn shows off the fish she caught, which was the biggest of the day. Liam and Evan show off what Justin landed with his fly rod. Cutthroat trout is the best fish to eat out of a river. Tender. Delicate flavor. Mmmm.

More of our family arrived well after dark on Sunday evening. It had been drizzly on and off Saturday and Sunday, and we ended up spending time in our tent reading while waiting for the rain to stop. The monsoon waited until everyone else arrived, though, to begin in earnest. It rained most of the night. When I woke early Monday morning, this is what I found:

And within half an hour of waking up the monsoon returned in earnest. Jay put up a tarp for us to eat our breakfast under... luckily it didn't need to be cooked, because there was no way we were getting a fire going!

Packing up camp. All of the new arrivals were in the campground less than twelve hours. You can see Bronwyn in the red poncho, Lauri in blue, with Richard and Jay (wearing a way-cool duster) working on packing up camp.

Bronwyn was so disappointed about having to end the trip early due to rain. By the time we had packed up all of us had very wet sleeves from where they had poked out from under our ponchos.
It was actually a great trip, just cut too short. We saw deer, beaver, moose, fox, rabbits, hawks, and flashes of fish. The stars we could see on our first night glittered clearly. And the canyon in the mist was beautiful, even if it meant too much water for camping.

I can't wait to go back.