The Benner's Spot

Michael’s parents came out to visit at the beginning of September over Labor Day weekend. They had been talking for awhile about wanting to go to Yellowstone so we decided to take them for the weekend when they came out. I was at work and they were “supposed” to be buying camping supplies, I got this text message instead. Haha love it!

We drove up through Grand Tetons National Park, I had never seen the Tetons, they were really quite majestic like everyone says, it was a gorgeous drive. We brought all our food for camping and were able to stop at Jenny Lake in the Tetons and have lunch. It was very relaxing.

After that we headed north to Yellowstone. I love this place and it is always fun to take new people to it and show them some of the gorgeous natural features there.

We camped out for 2 nights (and unfortunately forgot to take a picture of the campsite but it was on the back end of one of the loops in Madison Campground and therefore was huge! It was a great site), hike to the Lower Falls, took about every turnout and mini-hike you could along the main loop and had quite an adventure.

I have to share one of my favorite stories from our camping trip. We were cooking Bratwurst over the fire at our campsite. Karen was cooking them on the grate over the fire and Mike and Michael were giving her a hard time about rotating them because they thought they would fall in, but we insisted they wouldn’t. Well the boys left to get some firewood and sure enough two Brats fell in the fire and covered with ash! Karen quickly picked them out and wiped the ash off so they wouldn’t notice and we positioned them so that the boys would have to eat them, devious aren’t we?! Well after they came back we sat down to eat, we are all going for our second brat and Karen starts laughing, she had gotten them mixed up and eaten the one that fell in the fire, how did she know? It was still ashy, oops!

It was freezing at night, Karen and I both had probably five layers of clothes on if not more, I even slept in my winter ski coat, hat and gloves, obviously I am not made for winter camping but thankfully I was prepared. After a fun weekend in Yellowstone we headed over to Rexsburg Idaho to visit Michael’s brother Adam and his wife Chele. We had a great BBQ in the park for Labor Day grilling out Brats and fish, went swimming in the Snake River (Ok Michael, Adam and Karen went swimming, it’s pure snow runoff from the mountains and was far too cold for me), and even helped Adam purchase a car. As always it was fun hanging out with family. After that we headed back down to Orem were I headed back to work but Michael and his parents had a few more days of freedom and fun. At least they seemed to save a lot of the really fun stuff until I got off work. It was a great visit! Thanks for coming Karen and Mike!