Escaping the Heat -- Fishing with the Kids

The heat of Grand Junction can get pretty overwhelming for me in the summer.  I kind of melt and just want to draw the curtains and hide in our house concocting plans to get to the mountains.  Sometimes those plans don't have to be big to get some respite from the furnace.

To backtrack, the week after Memorial Day my mom had the two older cousins for "Grandma Camp".  They kept busy playing with Grandma all week and the final adventure was a trip to Sunset Lake on the Grand Mesa to try their hand at fishing.  We drove up and had a quiet lunch at Mesa Lakes Resort and then fished.  We had several varieties of deet-free and deet-full bug spray packed but were pleasantly surprised to find that we didn't need them.  It was still cool enough that the mosquitos weren't out.

We spent much of our Grandma Camp fishing day messing with bait and lines.  Thankfully our fisherman daddy came up later in the day with a new fishing pole for Alma.  She finally graduated from the little Toy Story pole and successfully casted

Emma happily took over the Toy Story pole.  We tied a stick to the end in lieu of a hook and she casted, splashed, whacked and reeled away.  Until she didn't and it was thrown down as she searched for more rocks to throw.

We have gone on to take the quick drive up the mountain to escape the heat several other times.  Our routine has been to picnic at the picnic tables by Glacier Springs and then fish the inlet to Sunset Lake.  One day my fellow Western Colorado mama and I took my two girls, her two girls and my friend's daughter to cool off.  We had all had enough of holing up inside and my kids were watching WAY TOO much Odd Squad.  Not only did we cool off, we felt super happy to see all four of the big girls fishing away.  We didn't catch anything but fishing fever and lots of smiles.

A week and a half ago we experienced a 25 degree temperature difference between our parking spot by Glacier Springs and our house in Grand Junction.  We went up in the evening armed with what leftovers we could find in the fridge, a package of hot dogs, s'more materials (sure glad I had a coupon and bought them just in case) and some scrap wood.  We made a fire, did some fishing and then ate dinner.  For obvious reasons the s'mores were a hit.  Emma kept saying over and over again, "I love marshminnows!"

Our most recent trip up this week was to escape the heat and let Grandma play with her new fishing pole.  It was stormy and so we happily donned our fleece jackets.  Most of our time was spent walking around -- exactly what we needed.  We did see our first couple mosquitos so we will have to be armed with our long sleeves and pants as well as an array of "bug dope" next time.

My guess is that we will have a summer of escaping to the Grand Mesa.