Roberts Family Reunion 2014 Copper Basin

Wednesday June 18, 2014

 

I finished work almost right at noon and got home around 12:45.  We were able to hit the road about 2:00pm which put us in the campsite about 7:00 pm.  Its typically a 5 hour drive from our house in Victor. We drove to Rexburg, then Mud Lake, to Howe, to Arco with Mackay being the last town.  We ended up taking two vehicles so Hal could leave early and get to a friend's first time at the temple.  Zed Jensen rode with Hal to give him some company.  After we passed Mackay about 5 miles Hal asked if there were any more gas stations.  I said nope and he told me he hadn't gassed up since we left home and he had around a fourth of a tank.  We turned around and went and got gas.  I gassed up as well and found a pretty decent map.  We headed out again going what I call the long way.  If you go past Mackay reservoir a bunch of miles there is a road that goes all the way to Sun Valley.  Somewhere in between you can turn left and go down to Copper Basin.  We chose this route since Hal had his low-riding car and I figured it would be the easiest on a car and then he could follow this route out again when he left.  We decided either to go over Corral Creek or Antelope Pass on the way back since either would be fine for a pickup and both have much more interesting views and roads. 

 

After we got to camp about 7 we pitched our tents.  We put ours out in the open so we could get more sun as the weather was feeling quite cold.  Most everybody in the family was there already.  We had eaten cold chicken and sandwiches so we didn't have to get any pots or pans out.  As you can see by the frost on Hal's tent and car it got quite cold that night.  I was toasty warm in my big sleeping bag but Katy and Macey froze.  Teresa and Quinn had a bunch of blankets and had no problem as well.

 

 

 

The day dawned beautiful on Thursday morning and we got up despite the cold and started getting breakfast going.  We had eggs, bacon etc.  The girls had to drive off and use the outhouse which was on the other side of the stream and trees to the right of my tent down below.  I forgot to get a picture of the old green water pump that is there.  It is quite neat to use.

Thursday morning we decided to hike up to some of the lakes up the trailhead behind our campsite.  The lakes are Round Lake, Long Lake, Big Lake and Rough Lake.  We decided to shoot for the easiest lake that possibly held fish.  The pictures of the hike to the lake are down at the end of the blog and I don't want to take the time to move them all up here so I will go down there to finish the story.  Please head down below..............   And then come back to here.

James and John and their gang left before us.  My group consisted of Hal, Zed, Macey and me.  Hal and Zed pretty much were ahead of us most of the time.  We saw lots of wildlife including 4 buck mule deer.  There was one that was pretty good size and all their antlers were still in velvet.  This picture below is about an hour into the hike.  You can see David and Morgan on horses at the end of the road there.  They started after us but soon passed us after this point.  The rest of the pictures are just scenery on the way.

This is kind of a roundabout way to Round Lake.  There was no clear cut trail but most everybody else went to Long Lake and around to Big Lake.  I was more interested in fishing and if it was good we decided to stay here for awhile.  If the fishing was not good we would go on to Long Lake.  Here are Zed, Hal and Macey coming up the hill toward the lake.  I had found a slightly quicker way through a swampy rocky marsh and so got ahead to take this picture.

The next 3 pictures all are a sequence of shots from the south to southwest of the lake.  It was beautiful and you can see the rocky marsh on the right where we had to cross.

Macey was quite the trooper on the hike and kept me going.  She was patient when I got tired especially on the last series of switch backs before the lake.  The switchbacks were tougher than what I thought they would be plus had a lot of mud and snow.