Our Annual Camping Trip To Palisades State Park

June 18th thru 22nd--Palisades State Park is in a town called Sterling. Sterling is just outside Manti, Utah. It is my kind of camping, indeed. There is a reservoir with canoes and paddleboats to rent. The camping sites are landscaped with showers and toilets galore. Over in a one of the corners of the park is a golf course and snack bar. I love this place!.........minus the many mosquitos and bugs. We come up here every year, usually for Memorial Day weekend, with my sister, Alishia, her husband, Shad, and their kids, Jacob and Samantha. This year we decided to come up during the Manti Pageant/Mormon Miracle Pageant. Nate had seen it before but it had been a very long time. I had never seen it and neither had Alishia and her family.

We rented a trailer again and were glad to have done so. This year we got a hybrid camper---it's a cross between a tent trailer and regular hard-shelled trailer. The trailer had a full bathroom, kitchen/cooking area and a U-shaped couch with a fold down table. My sister, Alishia, made the reservations for two sites with FULL hook-ups, a true treat! Because of the full hook-ups we were able to run the A/C everyday and enjoy a break from the heat. There were two beds. Nate took one with Brady and I took the other with Elise. Nate, being a little more tolerant than I, braved all four nights sleeping with a very clingy Brady. After one night of sleeping with a very clingy Elise, I couldn't take the lack of sleep another night so she got moved to the couch the other three nights and seem to do quite well.

The first day was spent getting settled in and figuring out all the camper had to provide us. We discovered the many mosquitos took a liking to Nate, me, and Elise. We were getting bit all over the place! Poor Elise, along with all the bug bites she had terrible allergies up there. I tried to make her feel a little better by telling her the bugs liked her so much because she's so sweet. Her comment to that was, "Well I don't mind them biting me but I don't like that the bites make me itch so much!" Brady, quite surprisingly, must have one benefit to having Type 1 Diabetes. The bugs didn't bite him! He walked away from this trip with no bug bites. I was so shocked and amazed! We coated the kids, and ourselves, with bug spray 3 or 4 times a day but they still bit us.

Anyhoo, our second day was the day we went to the pageant. It started at 9:30 pm. We figured the kids would fall asleep during the pageant but was told it was worth it to take them. We got to the pageant area around 7:30 to grab seats and take a look at all the booths and vendors around. We were disappointed to find several groups protesting the pageant and our LDS faith. We had to walk through one of the groups to get to the entrance. It was awkward but we held our heads high. By the time the pageant started it was dark and quite cold. We brought jackets and blankets and managed to stay, somewhat, warm. The pageant, in my opinion, seemed a little too over-dramatic and dragged out a little too long. The message was powerful though. By the end our two little ones were asleep. It was 11:15 pm. We woke them up and walked to our car to head back to the campsite. Once we got back it didn't take long for us all to be sound asleep.

For the rest of our camping trip we mostly hung around the campsite to rest and relax. We took a few trips to town for groceries and to look at some of the fun shops, along with a stop to a really yummy malt shop. We enjoyed visiting with Alishia and Shad. Brady and Elise loved playing with Samantha. Jacob, well, he enjoyed playing video games in the camper, most the time. I'm glad we were able to go and we'll plan to do so again next year. I think we'll stick to going Memorial Day weekend from now on.