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Outdoor Adventure Log

Posts Tagged camping

Grand Finale, summer 2011

Aug 13

Posted by Erik & Michelle in fly fishing, NOT fishing or hunting, Wonderful Wyoming | 2 Comments

Every summer we spend a few days with our nieces somewhere in Wyoming on a camping and fishing adventure. We had wanted to take the them to Yellowstone for quite some time now and this year was the year! The circumstance allowed us to spend the week with some good friends as well. On this adventure we slept in 32º weather, caught cutthroats for breakfast, saw a chocolate colored wolf, watched the sun set on the Tetons, witnessed the many amazing colors of Yellowstone, played games in the dark, disected owl pellets, ate many smores (sometimes for breakfast), rafted class 3 rapids on the Snake river, told ghost stories around colorful fires and drove 1,000 miles.

Hopfully these pictures tell part of the amazing story that was one of our best vacations…

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Fish Lake…and other mountain camps

Jul 19

Posted by Erik & Michelle in fly fishing, Wonderful Wyoming | No Comments

Top 10 reasons to spend your days off in the mountains!
1.  Cooler temperatures. In our 90+ degree mid summer pattern life gets to dragging by, lethargy takes over drive and everyone gets cranky.
2.  Have the area to yourself. You don’t have to go to the same place as everyone else. There hundreds of square miles in the State of Wyoming and only 600,000 people; who all seem to congregate in the same 10 places.


3.  Quiet. As the day passes the most peaceful sounds surround you when you are in the mountains; birds, lapping water, breeze through the trees… And at night- silence.
4.  Great fishing. Often the less pressure a fishery has the easier it is to catch fish. Throw out a fly or even power bait and catch yourself a tasty breakfast.
5.  No services. Are we really better off with Internet and TV everywhere we go? We lived without these for most of our lives and what a nice time to live without during our down time.
6.  Cooking over a fire. It takes time to get good at making sure you have just the right amount of hot coals under your meal, but if you spend all your off time around the fire you will get good fast!
7.  Wild flowers. With the exception of the drive to Pathfinder, you will be hard pressed to find as much color around the well used areas for weekend goers. In the mountains, however, the flowers abound and the varieties are endless.
8.  Milky Way. No, not the candy bar. When we spend our evenings around city lights or campground lights we miss the endless stars our sky shines down on us. In the mountains you can see satelites, planets, the space station and even galaxies!!
9.  Hiking. Exploration is one of the more enjoyable ‘do nothing’ activities. Climb a hill and look back; you may be amazed at what you see and where your mind takes you.
10.  Mosquitoes. Ok, not the best part but look back at this list.  Pretty good trade off, eh?  And if you bring the deet you will have no problems :)

 

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Pathfinder

Aug 10

Posted by Erik & Michelle in From the boat | No Comments

This was supposed to be a two day trip.  We got to Pathfinder at 3pm on Monday, we found strong winds and huge waves awaiting us.  We decided not to put the boat in the water and worked on organizing the boat and camper instead.  In the morning the wind was still blowing, although not quite so hard.  So, we decided to brave the waves and give it a try.  It was a rough ride to our honey hole.  When we got there it was a lot of work to keep the boat on track especially when we needed to kill the kicker when a fish hit.  But the fishing was phenomenal!!  We caught 15 or more fish and kept 10.  As we worked our way back to the ramp we realized that all the other boats had stayed in the bay where all the waves were rocking and rolling- we had been all alone.  We made the right choice fishing the other side of the reservoir.

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Popo Agie Wilderness

Jul 18

Posted by Erik & Michelle in fly fishing | No Comments

The first pack trip of the season!  We picked up our good friend Chad at noon after Michelle was finished with Popo Agie Wildernesssummer school and drove toward Lander.  We made it to the Fiddler’s Lake parking lot by 4pm, strapped on our backpacks and headed into the wilderness.  It was a 2 hour hike to go nearly 4 miles to our base camp at Tomahawk.  The plan was to take day packs the next morning to Fawn and Thumb Lakes for Brookies, Cuts and Goldens.

brookies
We made camp and Erik and Chad fished Tomahawk while Michelle made a hearty dinner of Dinty Moore and tortillas.
Halfway through dinner Chad became very ill.  It turned out he had altitude sickness.  We gave it until morning, but to no avail.  We needed to get out of there while he still had the strength to hike out on his own.  We left camp by 10:30 Saturday morning and safely made it to the truck.
We’ll be back, Popo Agie……..camp

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Boysen

Jul 2

Posted by Erik & Michelle in From the boat | No Comments

Wednesday afternoon we packed the camper, loaded the boat and hit the road for Boysen Reservoir.  We used to have amazing perch and walleye/sauger fishing at Boysen years ago when all we had was a 12’ Lund with a 25hp motor that maybe gave us 5hp.  We would spend almost every weekend there those years when Erik was working summers at Houston Supply and Michelle worked at the Boys & Girls Club.  Some of the hottest afternoons we can ever remember were out there.
catWhen we got to Shoshoni we could see a big storm brewing so we decided to stop at Walker’s to pick up a couple supplies and shoot the breeze while the breeze shot over us.  A friend of Sean’s was working in the shop and we had a very nice visit with him about walleye fishing on Boysen.
We hit the water around 6pm and decided to take some advice and stay on the ramp side of Tough Creek.  The wind came up pretty strong right away and we didn’t find any walleye in this part of the bay.  We decided to go around the corner and try a weed bank.  Erik caught a nice sized walleye within the first half hour.   We worked our way back and forth on this shelf for a couple hours and Erik picked up another walleye and a big catfish.  After a long lull in the action we moved to the end of the point of the bay and were able to pick up 4 more walleye before turning in for the night.walleye
Thursday morning we headed back to where we finished up Wednesday night.  Not as good as we expected.  Erik Picked up a walleye jigging and Michelle picked up two dragging her jig.  We also tried to put out our worm harnesses for a while, but neither of us did any good trolling.  After some time we picked up and went back to our old camping island and tried jigging a shelf.  No luck there.  We went back to Tough Creek where we saw the fellow from the bait shop and fished around him for a while.  Again, no luck.  Time for lunch!  Ribs on the barbie and a cold drink on a warm afternoon- nice.   After lunch we thought we might do better trolling for trout, so we headed for the middle of the lake and put out our lines.  We tried this for half hour or so and had one good hit.  From there we headed to the marina for more crawlers, ice and a cold treat.  The wind came up really strong again and it made it difficult to work our way across the lake back to Tough Creek.  We tried the ramp side of the bay one more time and again found no fish.  We went back around the corner to our spot from the morning and the night before and it wasn’t 30 minutes before we started finding the walleye. Erik finished the trip boating 5 fish and Michelle caught 3.  We kept the 3 we needed and put the rest back.
By Thursday afternoon the camps started really rolling in.  The place was packed by evening.  Parents yelling, dogs barking, generators running- ahhh, the great outdoors!

great outdoors
Although we had to work a little harder than we are accustom to, we still had a great time and left with our limits for the freezer.

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