The Staples: Cranes, Moose, and Brakes..who needs them anyway?

We enjoyed our time at North Fork during the Greenwell Reunion so much that we decided to spend one of our three day weekends back at the park. We drove up there Friday morning and got our camp set up.

Brian and I had heard of Porcupine Reservoir but hadn't been there so we went for a ride to find it.

We started up over the mountain on the dirt road to find it. Well, we ended up in Hyrum and knew we had missed the turn off somewhere. So, we turned around to head home. As we drove down the road, there was a sign that pointed to Porcupine Reservoir. I guess they only want to show you the way there if you come from Hyrum. So we found it. Not much there but it's supposed to be good fishing. We didn't have time to try as this big dark storm cloud was headed our way. We decided to get back over the mountain before it hit.

On the way back we drove through this big open meadow and all of the sudden we saw two Sandhill Cranes. At this point it was starting to rain these really big slow drops and was windy. These Cranes were doing a dance in the rain. That was kinda neat to see. We don't see those too often around here. They are massive birds.

When Brian went to stop the car to take these pictures of the Cranes we noticed that his car just didn't want to stop. The brakes were acting funny. Brian thought that maybe dust was in them and he glanced underneath the car to see if there was any fluid leaking and didn't see anything so we proceeded. Brian kept having a slow response to the brakes and we were on a dirt road, on a mountain, in a storm. Brian was great at taking his time, and being careful, and he got us back to the trailer just as the massive downpour hit. In fact, when Kennedy opened the truck door to get out a big clash of thunder hit. After the storm Brian went out to look at the truck, came back in, and said we have big problems. Somewhere on our offroad adventure the entire brake assembly had fallen off of the front drivers side wheel. Not just a brake pad, the entire assembly. We felt very blessed to have made it off that mountain safe.

Grandpa Rod and Grandma Carla were going to join us with their camping trailer on Saturday. Brian called his dad and asked him to bring up some extra tools.

We had made tin foil dinners for that evening so we made a little fire to cook them in. It didn't last too long because the rain started again. But it was long enough to get dinner and cinnamon apples for dessert.

We spent the rest of the night playing games together in the trailer and then went to bed.

So the next day Grandma and Grandpa arrived. We got their trailer all set up and then the boys started messing around with fixing the truck. They had to make a trip back home to buy parts but they were able to get it fixed.

Later that evening Spencer, Corianne, and Payton joined us for dinner and some fun.

As we cleaned up dinner and started to get a fire ready to go something strange happened. Spencer started moving the camping chairs around the fire and heard a noise in the grass behind him. When he turned around there were two moose standing right there behind our camp enjoying their own dinner.