My Gigantic Birthday Celebration

Guess who's super cute and just turned 29!? ME! You wouldn't believe the huge birthday party I had. Even P. Diddy or some other really famous person would be incredibly jealous. The entire extended Hanson family came together in Huntington Canyon for a weekend of birthday celebration and camping all for me!!

Ok. So maybe it was the Hanson Family Reunion. And maybe it just happened to fall on my birthday weekend. But I still count it as a birthday party. I mean, we were camping and fishing all weekend... what could be better than that?

The festivities actually started on Thursday, but Seth wasn't able to get that much time off, so we went down Friday instead. I still took Thursday off because I have a policy that I don't work on my birthday. Oh, and I didn't run either. In fact I lounged around all day long and tied flies.

We got to the Old Folks Flat campground in the afternoon, at about which time it started raining. It rained on and off for the rest of the day but luckily we were able to get our tent set up during one of the breaks. The Loel and Kathy Hanson family was in charge of dinner that night so we cooked up some sloppy joes. Unfortunately most of the pictures I took over the weekend were during that dinner, but at least I took some.

Seth supervising Marty's sloppy joe delivery.

Collette supervising Marty's sloppy joe delivery (you really gotta watch this guy!)

Tim in line for some food

Ashley and Megan

(and another guy that I can't remember his name but he looks like Hal Holbrook )

The next day Seth and I got up pretty early and tried out the fishing situation on the Huntington River. I've always been told that the fishing is best early in the morning, but in my experience it never is. I think it's an old wives' tale.

This is a picture from when I meditated on a rock in the middle of the river & watched mayflies.

Early morning fishing

The rest of the day on Saturday was spent fishing. First we went to Mammoth Lake (aka Huntington Reservoir) which wasn't too good, so we went up to Miller's Flat Reservoir and spent the rest of the afternoon there. The fishing was slow, but we ended up catching a few Rainbows with some gold spoons in the late afternoon. That night we went to Cleveland Reservoir and tried our hand at fly fishing. Marty even gave Arielle a lesson in casting. She looked pretty good!

Cleveland Reservoir didn't work out so well, so most of us decided to go over to Miller's Flat again to see if the fishing was any better. We caught a bunch of really small 3-4" Rainbows and a handful of pan fryers before it got dark.

Arielle with her hand-crafted leather headband and t-shirt.

Mama Hanson & Seth in deep conversation. Or talking about how much they like the choice of a pink bandana for our family.

Calysta & Arielle eating some food

Cute Collette... spotted me stealing a picture!

Marty Jr. toasting himself on the big bonfire.

Daddy Hanson

The next morning everybody packed up and headed home. Seth and I stopped once more to fish on the Huntington River and caught a few Browns. On our way back to Layton we stopped at Cabelas and Seth finally got a new pair of Simms chestwaders. He's pretty excited to try them out. They look pretty fancy. I bought a pair of women's Simms chestwaders too but haven't gotten them yet (it's a long very sad story... stupid UPS and stupid neighbors who steal stuff...)