In early July I took the kids on a quick camping trip. If I don’t go camping at least one or two times per year I’m likely to get pretty grumpy!

It is sometimes difficult to get a reserved campground on a Friday night in a local canyon so I decided to shoot for the Redman Campground in Big Cottonwood Canyon which is first come first serve. The campground is located near the top of the canyon between Solitude and Brighton Ski Resorts (the best campground are always at the top of the mountains).

We arrived at the campground around 11 am to find that only one campground remained available; however, the campsite was still occupied and would be for a couple more hours. We parked our car next to the campground and started wandering around the environs. We had a good time just goofing off in Nature while waiting a little while for our campsite. Here are a few photos we made during that time.

After getting the tent setup we played games and explored the area.

Julie came up that afternoon (she is not much into sleeping on the ground these days) to do an activity with the girls while Nate and I went mountain biking at Solitude. We had a great time.

We cheated a little on this camping trip at went to get pizza at solitude because our dinner plans for cooking over the fire didn’t quite work out. The pizza was really quite good.

That evening and night we had a blast doing all of our traditional camping activities; roaming the woods, cutting wood, roasting marshmallows, star gazing, and telling stories around the campfire until we are too tired to stay awake.

The next morning we lit an awesome fire to warm us up, ate breakfast, played in the woods a little more, and then cleaned up camp.

We headed up to the Brighton store to get a little more food before heading to Doughnut Falls for a good Saturday hike.

We made it too the falls in record time and even conquered the upper rock scrambling portion of the trail. Way to go kids!

We had a great outing and look foreward to the next time.