Jellystone

Camp Jellystone

Because we are putting so much money into our landscaping and hopefully getting kitchen cabinets, we decided to do a less expensive vacation close to home this year. We went to Camp Jellystone up in Estes Park. It is just less than 2 hours from our house. We had a great time, aside from the first night when I was up there by myself with the kids and Tyler got sick in the night and I couldn't get cell phone coverage and had to pack all the kids up and take them into town to call Laren at 2am.

Tyler on the hike. He was adamant about wearing his hat, and he always put it on backwards. Sometimes I could sneak and turn it around on him if he was distracted!


Every single day they do craft activities at Camp Jellystone. My kids loved to go and participate. They also went and rode the wagon with Yogi Bear.


We played in the game room air hockey, pool and some other video type games that my kids wanted to play.

Kyle playing me air hockey.

We played miniature golf and went hiking a couple of times. My kids played at the playgrounds.

We swam at the heated pool, it had gorgeous mountain views.

My kids participated in potato sack races, hula hoop contests and tug-of-war. They had a tug-of-war for adults too, but Laren messed his knee up a couple of weeks ago and I was watching Tyler.

Laren and Tyler at the Pavilion watching the "contests."


Alyssa won the Hula Hoop contest by being able to walk while hula-ing and hula on her waist, knees, etc... She was ecstatic to have won this T-shirt.

Alyssa and the T-shirt she won hula hooping.

There were probably a dozen or more different species of birds there. It was fun to sit at camp and watch the birds. One of our very favorite things was to sit around the campfire in the evenings, watching the fire, singing camp songs, telling ghost stories, roasting marshmallows, making smores, stoking the fire, searching for pine needles for the fire, and trying some new camp recipes. Kayla made pizza and we also made cinnamon rolls by roasting the refrigerated dough on a stick and then rolling it in butter and brown sugar.


Rilyn with "Cindy" bear.


We sat up one night and looked at the constellations in the sky. The Big Dipper was right above us. As we stared at the North Star we couldn't help but think of President Hinckley and how he slept under the stars as a child and realized the constancy of it's brightness.

After I had went to bed with the little ones, Laren was still up with Kayla and Kyle when he went to the bathrooms and came upon another camper with a HUGE telescope and he offered for Laren and the kids to look into it. They saw some amazing sites, including Jupiter in a fair amount of detail. The telescope filled the entire back of his pick-up truck, it was that big. He was visiting from Nebraska.

We took some gorgeous hikes and while we were on one I came upon these beautiful flowers that I had to take a picture of.







One of the days we drove into Estes Park, that was 6 miles away, and went into all the little shops and went to the Scandinavian Festival and had some ice cream.


Another great thing was having a warm shower!!! There is nothing like feeling clean, even while camping!! They had cabins you could rent, or you can bring an RV or tent. It is pricier than most other camping places, but well worth it.

Visiting Camp Jellystone was lots of fun. We will definitely go back in future years. We made some great memories there. It was like Summer Camp for the whole family!



Bye Yogi, see you next summer!!