Flaming Gorge, Swett Ranch, Camping Extravaganza

Okay, first of all, I want to say to anyone reading... if you're going to read this and think, "Wow, they're amazing, they are always doing things, I never do this much..." then just stop. The truth is, I just don't write about all the days where we sit around doing nothing. All the days where nobody does anything but whine that we never do anything.... we are truly a boring family. But who wants to read boring? That's why I only write the few interesting things that we do. Now, go ahead and read on... The pictures are completely and horribly out of order. But, I don't care, so you'll be happier if you don't care either. ;) This is the garden at the Swett Ranch near Flaming Gorge. The garden is truly amazing... this picture doesn't even do it justice. My garden is pretty close to this amazing, but not quite... what? What did you say? I don't even have a garden? Well, what I meant to say, is my imaginary garden is pretty close to this amazing!
This is in one of the outbuildings. I thought it was a cool picture. I took it. Don't tell me that it's not cool, or I might cry.
So, back in the very early 1900s, a very young man started a homestead here, and made it work, through thick and thin... until the 1970s, when he died, and his family couldn't make it with their shrinking grazing rights. This place was so peaceful, beautiful, and homey, that I could really live there... even though they only made it to town 2 times a year!
This is in the "big house". Isn't this bedroom just cute?
Kitchen in the big house.

This is in the "medium" house.
Here's the first cabin... Oscar moved this cabin from somewhere else when he first came to homestead the ranch. It is a teeny one room little cabin. He and his wife lived here with THREE children... then they decided to build the two room cabin...
...here. They continued to live in this little two room cabin until they had SIX kids... then it was time to build again...
... and they built this three bedroom house and proceeded to have three MORE children. So, yes, nine kids in this house. The bathroom is the little room on the right side. It only has an outside entrance, because Oscar thought it was unsanitary to have an entrance from the inside. It's amazing how much LESS people lived on way back then. Why do we have to have so much space, so much stuff? Why do families continue to build bigger and bigger and bigger homes, and be so caught up in the square footage?

Here's where the out of orderness really comes in... this is looking down from the dam. We went on the little tour of the dam... it was pretty neat!
Swett Ranch info.
Here you can see the first one-room cabin, and the "big house".
Inside the one room cabin... it was cheerful! There was one bed in the corner where all 5 of the Swetts slept together. I don't quite understand how there ever got to be more than 1 Swett child...

We camped at Firefighters Memorial Campground. This spot was neat... fully equipped with a cliff to the side.
This is inside the dam... the equipment that turns the water power to electricity or something or other. I was really listening closely.
Another view at the dam.
There's this spot where you can buy food and feed the fish... there were humongous fish in there!! Brandon was hyperventilating a little bit, wanting to go fishing there (but you can't, unfortunately). I wish you could see how many fish there were... this picture doesn't show anything, but I put it in there anyway, just so I could tell the story.

Our final picture of the campground. I'm so glad we could get a few camping trips in this summer!