Survived The 4th!

I have survived the 4th of July.....just barely!!!  LOL!!  So now comes the rest of the summer! And it will get and stay busier for the next 5-6 weeks, then it will settle down for a week or so before I get hit for Labor Day Weekend!  But after that....ahhhhhh....my little piece of heaven will be returned to me!!  Heheheh! But overall, this weekend went pretty well....only had a couple of "probelm children"!  Overall there were a great bunch of campers here...and all went as well as you could expect with folks here that were not real campers and wanted to get away from the city/heat/hectic pace of the cities....and be under the stars and near a cool lake and river and nice cool nights!

I'm doing this from Bertha and the campground, and I have checked and this Blogger app really packs down the pic files, so I can sit here and do a full update without having used too much of my roaming data! Which is great!!

It was a full moon right before and during the 4th....and it was just flat beautiful!  This is a shot from my site looking down the first loop road towards the East.

I just couldn't miss trying to get the shot of what I saw from the fire as I sat there at night.....a really nice little fire in the pit with the moon thru the trees!

I had dinner guests over for the evening of July 3rd. From left to right are Paul & Karen (a sweet couple that had lately been in China teaching English at a University there), then Harry & Coty (from the Netherlands, they come over every summer or so and travel the U.S. on motorcycle, which they own and keep at a friends in CO.), then it's John & Rosanna (John is our maintenance man & Rosanna comes up weekends & helps him manage the Chinook Bay campground a mile down the road). We had a great time and I so enjoyed listening to them all talk...I had a blast listening to the stories and questions and "tales" that flowed around the table!

Next is a shot showing about a third of the Chinese families that were here for 2 nights. They were actually fun, after I had a ka-nip-tion-fit!!! on the morning of the 4th when I looked out my window and say 4 of their 5 firepits with smoke coming out of them and not a single soul around!! After I calmed down and figured out that they had probably never camped, we got the fires out (John came over with his truck and water tank) I had a "camping basics/camping ethics & safety" class with most of the fathers & some of the kids....there were 10 families here. And only one of them had done any camping.....one time last year.....and it went real well. I'm looking forward to having them back later this summer....we'll see how much sunk in and stayed with them!  LOL

I was really pounding -politely pounding!- on the safety issues! Such as you don't leave a fire burning without either someone being left in the camp...or you douse it completely when you go out for the day! And adding to the fact that it a person could be cited for it and fined anywhere from $250 to $2,500....it definitely got their attention! And the fact that we are in bear and wolf and lion country and leaving food out and trash around the campsite could make for a very unpleasant upclose encounter with on of those creatures!  LOL! About 2 hours after our "class" one of my other campers came by on their evening stroll and stopped and asked "How did the class go? From the looks of it, very well....their campsites are so clean now!!"  LOL!

This is a better pic of Tom & Joy, the couple from the Keys. They came over for supper the night before they left to go home. They were a real great couple, and I look forward to seeing them in 2 years...maybe less!!  LOL... in the Keys! I plan on going that way in 2 winters and spending a month or so down there. It is one of the places that is on my list of places to go to and spend time at that I have not gotten to and really want to see! Especially the Keys Deer!

This is Bob & Betty from MO. They were a great couple and stayed with me for longer than they had planned....they liked it here and it was back when the temps in the "lowlands" were hitting 100+. I look forward to having them back one day!

Now this is just sad....I can't remember "mom & dad's" names....but the little blonde is Bailyn..."just like bailing hay!"  LOL! And the day that they had to leave, she made them come by so that she could tell Frog bye!! She was a doll!

This couple ended up being really neat folks, from Chico, CA....Buck and Janine! Their visit got off to a rocky start....someone had decided to remove some of my reservation placards...and I had 5 sites totally screwed up...and one of them was their's!!! Buck is a CalFire guy, and after about a half hour of "talking" things got better and we ended up becoming pretty good friends. They spent basically a week with me and one of these days I'm going to end up knoncking on their front door and saying hi!  Can't wait...have a valid reason to go back into CA now for a visit!!  LOL!

I know I repeat myself....but I have some really great campers...a couple and their daughter were leaving out today, and they gave me a bag of fresh fruit! How they guessed red grapes and cantalope were my favorites?!?!?!?  

This should be a pretty well full update for life up here in Sunny Gulch!! The heat wave has finally broken, the LOW pressure that has been sitting over us has finally moved away to somewhere...thanfully!!! And the temps are now getting back to where they should be in this gorgeous counttry!

Right now, outside, it is 69* here and thundering, lightening and raining! It is just glorious!!! As long as the lightening doesn't start any fires in the area. It has just gotten very pleasant! 

John was coming over later to burn hotdogs again with me, but I do believe that I will be making pancakes in the house instead and then we're probably going to watch a movie....got to relax sometime!

That's the latest from Sunny Gulch Campground in Idaho....I'm hoping that one of these summers everyone will be able to come up here and spend a few days with me and see just how great this Sawtooth National Wilderness/Forest/Recreation Area is!!

Until the next update....God Bless and try to stay out of trouble!!