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The last family reunion I talked about was our backpacking trip in the Uintas. Our next family reunion marked a change in the format of our reunions. No more backpacking trips with unexpected storms or trails that are much longer than anticipated (though we’ve still had day hikes that have run long).
For this first non-backpacking reunion, we tried some car camping at Utah Lake State Park.
There’s a bike path that starts in Vivian Park and runs down Provo Canyon, ending at Utah Lake. We biked and rollerbladed the length of the path, and had a good time. One of my sisters was pregnant, so she pushed her son in a jogger, which gave her the added stability she needed to rollerblade down the canyon. She’s always been a great example to me of finding a way to be active despite health challenges.
My parents rode that tandem bicycle in the picture above, which allowed my mom, who has rheumatoid arthritis, to participate in the experience. In recent years her mobility has been limited by her RA, but she does what she can to participate in as many activities as she can during our reunions.
We played card games and had an epic water gun and water balloon fight.
We played a marathon croquet game. Croquet is no the most exciting game around on the best of days, and if my memory serves, it was really hot that day. The game filled some time, but none of us was anxious to repeat the experience at future reunions.
The weather cooperated: no hail or fog or rain, and nothing really unexpected happened. But I think we all felt that this reunion was rather tame and unexciting. We like things a bit more lively, and not having something go wrong threw us for a loop. As a result, we changed things up again when we planned our next reunion.
In recent years, we’ve settled into more of a rhythm of what we like to do at our reunions, but 15 years ago, my siblings and I were still settling into being adults and having kids of our own and figuring out what we do and don’t enjoy doing. There’s nothing wrong with planning some duds though. The experiences that were closest to being disasters are the ones that always seem to be brought up first when it comes time to “remember when…”
