In August I was lucky enough to head down to Flaming Gorge
for a long weekend. I went with one of
my college roommates, Kay, her family and another family. It was a great time even though the Wyoming
weather was not the most cooperative (but when is it ever?).
The northern side of Flaming Gorge, Buckboard Marina, is out
in the sticks where the antelope roam along with sagebrush, dust and jack
rabbits. The campground itself is really
quite barren but the spaces are big and the bathrooms and showers are nice. The Russian olive trees (if you can find one) provide a
little shade (sort of) in the heat of the day. What the trees are really good for is tying down
tents and things so they don’t blow away!
Barren Campground
Antelope roaming...
Actually there were more than antelope - how about this lost river otter?
One great advantage of Flaming Gorge is that most people go
here to fish so there really isn’t much competition for other water sports –
which is drastically different than most places in Utah. The downside is that you do deal with the
wind and the weather. Each day we were
sadly blown off the water by about 3pm and as early as noon. The water is pretty brisk so a wetsuit is
advised. But, when the weather was nice
it was a great place to be!
Glass water to ski or wakeboard on
Waterskiing, wakeboarding, knee boarding and surfing were
all had by everyone and it was fun. Max
was able to stand up on a knee board while Bridget was getting better every
minute on the slalom. Blake was able to do flips and all sorts of crazy tricks on the wakeboard. Everyone else has a
ways to go to catch up to him! I even
tried some surfboarding. As I’m a bit
balance challenged I didn’t do very good but had fun regardless. Thanks to Abby and Mo for being energetic
teachers.
While camping I learned a few new tricks. One is to play glow stick "bocce ball". After dark you take 3 glow sticks and connect
them to create the target ring. Then,
you take 2 glow sticks to make a smaller ring for each individual. You throw the bigger ring as a target and
each person tries to throw their ring the closest to the bigger ring. It looks cool and all levels and ages of athleticism can
do it. That isn’t to say that skill
isn’t involved which apparently I didn’t possess. It was lots of fun.
Another fun thing to do is take pie makers and cook biscuits
in them. I’ve cooked lots of things but
never biscuits. Throw some honey butter
on them and it is darn tasty!
I made some new friends and if things work out maybe I’ll be
invited again next year –with hopefully better weather!
