Flaming Gorge Wyoming 2013

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. 

Blake showing us up on the wakeboard with a flip

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!