Lilly Lake: Day One

We spent this weekend, our last weekend before school starts back, camping with Aaron and Jaimie near Kamas, UT at Lilly Lake Campground. Our last camping attempt was rather atrocious; we tried to go camping without reservations on Pioneer Weekend and ended up in Idaho before finding an available campsite. By then we were so hungry and ready to get out of the car that we took the first site we found--a dusty spot on an old cow pasture, turned ATV park. The neighbors were rowdy and the landscape was less than scenic. In spite of it all, we had fun and made a memory; the best news is that that trip set an incredibly low bar for future camping trips. Even without such a low standard, this weekend was simply wonderful. There were a few setbacks, of course: isolated thunderstorms meant soggy tents and a late dinner (it's hard to keep coals warm in the rain), forgotten flashlights meant utter darkness after 9pm (especially since said isolated thunderstorms blocked our moonlight), and no sleeping pads or air mattresses meant some hard sleeping. The rest of the experience more than made up for those minor things, and here is a recap of our first day.

Before getting to our campsite, we stumbled upon a really great waterfall and spent some time wandering around.

Once we got to Lilly Lake and scoped out a fantastic camping spot, we headed back up to the front of the campground to put our payment envelope in the dropbox, and much to our surprise and delight, we saw a moose family! 

This is easily one of the most beautiful places on earth, and we got to see even more of it on Friday evening while Drew and Aaron tried their hand at fly fishing in the nearby Teapot Lake.

They didn't catch anything, but luckily, we weren't relying on fresh fish for dinner. Aaron and Jaimie had planned a delicious meal of steak and sour cream potatoes, and they did an impressive job of cooking it over an open fire.  

After dinner, we sat around the fire talking for a long time. It was so, so dark; although it can be a little scary, especially with posted bear warnings, it's a really strange, but really healthy feeling to be in such a small circle of light somewhere in the middle of such a big, dark, and beautiful world. We cuddled up in our tent somewhere close to midnight, ready for good sleep that honestly didn't come. 

Uncomfortable sleeping conditions made us plenty willing to leave them behind early the next morning for another day of adventure by these alpine lakes; more on that next.