The Great Anderson "Mancation" of 2010

We just returned from our annual Anderson boys fishing and camping expedition. This is the second year of our "mancation" so I figure it's a set-in-stone tradition, at this point! This year we invited my dad to come along with us, which made it extra fun this time around. We did everything one would expect out of a masculine-fueled week of macho diversions. We used knives to pick our teeth, we shot first and asked questions later and we grunted generously as our primary form of communication—all indispensable lessons that help the young 'uns make the transition from boys to men.

See the documentation of a week of roughing-it with the Anderson boys below.

Even though we were leaving the luxuries of home behind, we still saw fit to apply sunscreen liberally—some of us more liberally than others.

Let the fishing begin.

We had fish for dinner each night.

We stayed in an area called Acord Lakes in the Fish Lake National Forest.

This little camping trailer was our home away from home.

Here's the inside of the trailer. It rained during lunch one day forcing us inside to eat.

This was the view from our campsite.

We had all three of the 4-wheelers there so we were able to do a lot of exploring.

Here we are fishing in the nearby creek. Adam asked a very important question on the banks of this creek. He wondered why the fish don't just swim to the surface and stick their mouths out of the water allowing us to drop our hooks in their mouths and catch them. I have to admit, it sounds better than the traditional form of baiting a fish hook and endlessly waiting for the fish to bite.

The boys spent a lot of time carving sticks in their free time.

Grandpa carved the boys wooden knives out of aspen branches.

One afternoon we decided to build a "fort." We horribly underestimated the amount of time it would take to build an 8' X 9' tepee style stick fort. We worked on it for several hours and were only able to finish about half of what we had hoped. Fallen sticks were plentiful at first, but as the project progressed, we found ourselves traveling deep into the woods to find more building materials. Maybe we'll finish it next year when more dead wood has fallen nearby.

Here we are sitting in our half-finished fort.

To add insult to injury, as we were exploring the nearby mountains on the 4-wheelers one afternoon, we found this flawless fort not more than a few miles from our "beauty." This one was equipped with a deck, a little cave-like basement under that big rock you can see there, and a kitchen sink with running water. Actually, I'm just kidding about the sink, but as you can see, they made our fort look as though the first little piggie was helping us construct ours.

As I've mentioned earlier, we did a lot of exploring on my dad's 4-wheelers. We found some really pretty trails that led us high up into the tall pine trees of the Fish Lake mountains.

We also did some clay pigeon shooting because, let's face it, it wouldn't be much of a mancation without guns, now would it.

This was Adam's first time shooting a gun larger than a BB gun. He loved it.

This gun that Conner's shooting is a 410 pistol handgun which are relatively rare.

We stopped in Salina for a ride in my dad's airplane.

Adam and Conner both had turns to act as "copilot" on our flight.

We flew over the Manti temple before heading back to Salina.

This is the back corner of my dad's hangar. He's made it a pretty comfortable place to hang out after each flight.

Christian wasn't quite old enough to go with us this year. I think he'll be ready next year. He was pretty bummed to hear that he wasn't going with us so I promised him that I'd take him fishing when I returned. He took me literally. He wanted to go fishing immediately when we pulled into the driveway. So we found ourselves doing a little more fishing on Saturday night at a nearby pond. We didn't catch anything, unfortunately. I'm sure we would have if the fish would have taken Adam's idea into consideration.

That sums up our camping excursion for this year. We had a lot of fun and it was even more enjoyable having my dad come with us this year. The best part was just spending several uninterrupted days together with my boys and my dad. We can't wait until next year's camping trip. Until then, we'll be slowly readjusting to the expected societal norms of civilization. "Grunt."