10th Anniversary: Redfish Lake

I guess it's about time I blogged about the trip our family took to Redfish Lake like THREE WEEKS AGO. Sheesh. I'm such a loser.

Anyway, for our 10th anniversary, Aaron and I decided to take a trip with the kids. Nothing too fancy or expensive, but something fun. Redfish Lake came up in conversation at Aaron's work, and the idea of taking off to the mountains and spending a couple of days relaxing by a lake and sleeping in a cabin sounded appealing.

We left Friday morning and made the 4 hour drive over. The trip to Redfish Lake takes you through 3 National Forests (Boise, Challis and Sawtooth), so the scenery on the way was beautiful.



Redfish Lake itself is pristine and is situated at the foot of the Sawtooth Mountains. It couldn't have been a more gorgeous day. We arrived a couple of hours before check-in time (oops) but didn't mind waiting on the beach and letting the babies play. The weather was perfect and the kids thoroughly enjoyed themselves. (Prepare yourself for LOTS of photos of my kids playing on the beach.)

















I like this sequence of Hakan building a sandcastle. It's just so him.











Here's the first cabin we stayed in (we had to move to a different one the next day because of a booking screw up). Unfortunately I forgot to take pictures of the inside, but basically you walk into the bedroom where all the furniture is made of logs, then you pass through a short hallway with the bathroom off of that, and at the back is a sitting room with an electric fireplace, a leather chair and a sleeper sofa. Oh, and it smells like cedar. It was lovely.

We had a slight view of the lake from the porch.

The evening we arrived Aaron took the two older kids out on the lake in a canoe while Finnley and I napped in the cabin.





In the evening we paid to use a fire pit so we could heat up our chili for dinner. The big kids and I gathered firewood and Aaron got us a good fire going.





On Saturday Aaron and the big kids got up early to go fishing. Hakan only lasted about half an hour before he'd had enough, so Aaron brought him back to cuddle in bed with me, then went back out with Pyper.

She stayed out there for two hours! Never did catch anything, but I don't think she minded.

This deer was a brave one and came within a few yards of our porch.

I know it looks like Pyper is trying to catch it with her fish net, but she assures me she wasn't.

The weather on Saturday was pretty fickle. We spent a good portion of the day inside, waiting out several thunder showers. We'd planned to cook our dinner outside again but settled for pizza in Stanley instead. This was the view as we headed back to the lake.

Caught sight of a double rainbow on the way back, too.

We had to check out on Sunday and then made our way over to Rexburg. In all our short visit to Redfish Lake was a nice one. I told Aaron we might just have to make that an annual thing.

Aaron worked at the Sugar City plant the following week, and while we were there we got to see our friends the Chapmans. We got together at their house in Rigby for a cookout and some hang out time.



Their little girl Brynlee is darling. I love this scrunchy little face she makes.
They have a HUGE backyard that I'm super jealous of, where the kids (and Daddies) ran around a little before we had to leave. (Aaron is about to peg right in the back with that ball. He's a nice guy.)

By the time our trip was over I was ready to come home, but I definitely appreciated the opportunity to take a trip with my family just because we wanted to. It was a nice change being able to go somewhere, not because there was somebody to visit or something to attend or for some other specific reason, but simply because we felt like going there.

We've decided we need to do that more often.