Wherever the Road Leads: Fishing with Friends

(By Steve) One of the first things we did when we moved to Sandy was to join a church. We have been going to the Rock Church and have really enjoyed the solid Biblical teaching and the friendships we made. We joined a small group the first week we started attending because my first day there just happened to be when they had tables setup to entice people to join a group. In the group we joined we met our friends John and Lori Duddleston and their daughters Sam and Carly. Jake took a big liking to Uncle John and did his best to make him wish he tried for that boy :)

Jake is very fond of his Uncle John

We were honored to be invited by them to come up to Washington Lake on their annual labor day camping trip. John has a large 5th wheel like ours, but we were only going to tent camp this time. Since Linda had just had Katie, there was no way that she could go, so I bravely decided to go with the other four kids.

We passed this waterfall right before the campground

Washington Lake is in the Uintah mountains which is about 90 minutes East of Salt Lake. It is way up at about 10,000 feet in elevation. It is on highway 150 which leads to the highest point in Utah and the Flaming Gorge area of Wyoming.

We had planned on going there Friday night and then stay all day on Saturday, and then leave Sunday morning. Those plans changed when John called and told me that they had been having a cold rain that looks like it will continue for a long while. We decided to be smart and just go up on Saturday for the day. The trip up there is gorgeous. It is always so nice when I can get out of the Salt Lake valley, for some reason when I do, I feel like I can breathe again.

Alyssa caught the second most fish

When we got there, the weather actually started to clear up a bit which was nice. Everyone was telling us how much it had rained over night. The first thing I did was to take all the kids fishing. Of course I knew that Genna and Jake would grow tired of fishing very quickly. After about 30 minutes Jake could not stop crying, so I left the big girls and took the two little ones back to the RV. They spent the rest of the time being spoiled by Sam, Carly and their friends.

By the time I got back to get the girls they had a sting of trout that they had caught. I was surprised and impressed. All together I think that Shanan caught seven fish, and Alyssa caught five fish, and me, well I caught only one fish. It wasn't for lack of trying though. While we were fishing, within 5 minutes the winds picked up and the temperature dropped 20 degrees and chased us back to the RV. We struggled to clean the fish in the cold and then retreated back to the RV.

Shanan had to clean all the fish, since she caught the most

For dinner John, Lori, and Jim cooked up an amazing dinner. John cooked the trout and they were amazing. Lori made delicious fish tacos and Jim made the most incredible shrimp I ever tasted. He kept saying that they didn't turn out well, but I couldn't imagine them tasting any better.