4th of July Weekend

Stiles, Starkweather and Anderson Families

I'll apologize for all the pictures from the beginning. This blog serves as our family journal and scrapbook, so I try to put as much on here as possible.

Memorial Day weekend we were suppose to go camping with some friends, but due to the weather we were experiencing the trip was cancelled. Fourth of July weekend, was a swim meet free weekend (all of our kids are on swim team) so we decided to go camping. Three families, 6 adults and 11 kids. One of the families has 40acres up in the Stanislaus National Forest. We didn't really have an idea of where we were going. We just knew it was somewhere up past Sonora and that there would be no running water, no electricty and no phone service. We have never been "dry" (without hook-ups) camping before so this was going to be an adventure for us. A few days before leaving we were told that we needed to leave early enough to get there before dark because some trees had fallen and they needed to be cleared out of the way so we could in. We pulled off the paved road around 7:00pm in the evening and drove for like 30 miles on dirt, rocky trails through the forest, stopping along the way to remove any trees that had fallen. John decided he needed to get the camera out, because no one would believe the adventure we were on. Right before we reached the gate going into the property, there were about 4 large trees down, the chain saw was getting dull, at one point it died and we didn't know if we were going to get it started again. John had his little hand saw out trying to make some headway on the trees, it was getting dark, cold and we were being ate alive by mosquitos. By this point we were all determined we could've never been pioneers. We weren't sure how 6 adults and 11 kids (the oldest one being 12) were going to be able to move these trees. There was no way we were going to be able to turn around and get out. Luckily after some hard work and team work we were able to get the tree's out of the way and enter into the property. All the tree removal took about 2 hours.

Friday, July 2, 2010- We enjoyed the day playing in the creek, learning how to ride dirt bikes and going on a hike.

John, Ashlee, and Mikayla's Highlight of the day: "Mom learning how to ride a dirt bike".

Saturday, July 3, 2010- Some of us went by car, some of us went by dirt bikes for a drive and a little bit of river playing in Clay Creek.

Some photo's of the kids:


Stiles Family: Austin, Ashlee, Alyssa, & Allison. Starkweather Family: Taylor, Sarah, Brooke, Heather &Riley. Anderson Family: Ashlee and Mikayla

Stiles&Starkweather Families

The Stiles Family: Sam, Meliesa, Austin, Ashlee, Alyssa and Allison

The Four of Us.

Sarah, Mikayla, Brooke, Ashlee, Heather

Sunday, July 4, 2010. Spent the day going for a hike and exploring an abandoned church camp, dirt bike riding and packing up to go home.

Silly Faces

We arrived home around 7:30pm. Took a much needed shower and headed to the Stiles Home for Pizza, fireworks and swimming.

It turned out to be a great weekend spent with friends. We survived "dry" camping. Came home with our water tank 2/3rds full. Lot's of mosquito bites and memories. It was great to be out camping somewhere where your kids could just wonder off and you didn't have to worry about them distubing someone else or someone trying to pack your kid off. You could be as loud or as quiet as you wanted to be. Mikayla and her friends were big girls and slept out in a tent everynight. It was fun and we hope to be able to go back someday.