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08/11/2005: "27-28 July 2005"

Wednesday July 27, we all went to Lost Trails Hot Springs. Aunt Catharine treated us to lunch there at the lodge, which was quite the adventure in patience with the knowledgeable staff member "on her way there" and a server who "didn't work [t]here" and a chef who hadn't cooked there in almost 20 years. The high prices didn't translate into quality service or food, unfortunately. They seemed genuinely surprised that we had chosen to eat lunch there--never a good sign!

Getting the pool my first thought was "Wow, what a difference in temperature from Lake Como!" It reminded me of being at Elk Horn Hot Springs, where Richard and I honeymooned almost 8 years ago. That was fun reminiscing....

They had a nice shallow area for Elena and Emma to splash around in separated by a wall with a break for stairs in the middle leading to a gradually sloping pool. They were able to take turns swimming around with Uncle Nelson (only when they could tell him what his name was--Elena had so much fun with her "Uncle Melson") or Grandpa Don or Aunt Caroline. Duncan and Cheanna did that some at the end, but mostly enjoyed doing their own thing or playing catch/keep away with the older children. It was late afternoon before I could convince the children that we should go back to camp. The showers there were single switch hot water, though, not as enjoyable for the girls as it was for me. After tenting it for a couple of nights, the hot showers felt great!

I planned on camping for about three days since I knew that there would be a hike up White's Mountain that I wasn't going to be doing. I had assumed that would happen later in the week and we would just go home when everyone went backpacking. The backpacking never happened though, just the hikes on Tuesday, so my attempt to not overpack left us short of clean clothes to stay beyond Wednesday. I could have gone to a laundromat in Hamilton that night, but I opted to pack up, stay for dinner & s'mores, and drive home instead. If I had known how relatively easy the camping trip would have been on my eight months pregnant body, I would have gladly stayed the extra couple of days. We definitely had a great time camping with the extended family. My Dad and his cousin John were nice enough to help with packing the tent back into its little bag so I didn't have to do that much squatting or kneeling. I left Lake Como shortly after 10pm and made it back to Idaho Falls by 2:30am and had everyone settled and was in bed by 3am.

Thursday was spent hanging around the Rydalch house, catching up on sleep and laundry =)
A nice relaxing day.