Thursday, July 9, 2009

4th of July Weekend

I've been meaning to post this for a few days now...but again this whole wedding thing keeps taking up all my time. ;) Anyway, last weekend we went down to Lake Truman with my friend (and bridesmaid!) Ashley, and her family. First of all, let me say - we. had. a. blast! It was so much fun. Ash told me there would be some awesome scenery down there, so I brought my camera (duh!).

We got down there at about 8:30 on Thursday night, got all set up, and proceeded to stay up until the wee hours of the morning. We were, uh, sitting by the campfire signing Kumbaya? Yeah, somehting like that. :) Well, when we woke up the next morning, expecting to go out on the boat and relax our hangovers away, we were not-so-pleasantly surprised to find out that a storm was brewing. So we sat under our sweet tailgaiting canopy for about 3 hours just waiting the rain out. Needless to say, the beer consumption started a *little* early that day...

Anyway, I digress. After the rain stopped, and we were still waiting around for (actually I don't really remember what we were waiting for...but most everyone had gone somewhere, and we were still sitting around...) so I decided to bust out the camera and get a few shots of life at camp.

This is one of the camp fire. Matt and Zach (a friend of ours who also came down) were so stinkin proud of themselves for keeping this bad boy going throughout the entire storm...
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Apparently Zach's shoes were a little soggy, and the camp fire seemed like a good place to dry them out. Don't ask me why, but I felt like it made a sweet photo...
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Look at this stud. He was trying to avoid my camera, but he should know by now that you just can't do that. :) As you can see, he's wearing his new "golfin hat" as he calls it. I think he looks a *little* funny, but just so darn cute at the same time. :) By the way, I'm marrying this stud in 9 days. I know, you're jealous, it's ok.
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Ash's mom had this fantastic "beer garden" sign posted right at the entrance of their camp site. Gotta love it...
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Since this trip, Matt and I are convinced we need to purchase a wheeler (4-wheeler that is). Ash's family has a crap-ton of them (ok I think 4, but that's a crap-ton right?!), and riding around on them was just so much fun. I never thought I'd actually be able to drive one (if you know me, you know how well I drive a car...) but I did, and it was so fun! I'm not actually positive who's wheeler it is in the photos, but it was sitting on the trailor at our camp site at the time, and I felt the need to get some shots of it :)
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After boating for a good couple of hours that day, we came back and Ash wanted to take me to this place called "Devil's Staircase" (You'll see why it's called that in a minute). This is where I got my first wheeler driving experience that I mentioned earlier. Ash is my partner in crime when it comes to photography, so we strapped on our camera bags, and hopped on the wheelers. This was that great scenery she was talking about...
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That's Ash's sister Cassady standing there...such a model...
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And here is that "Devil's Staircase" part I mentioned... :O
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What. a. view.
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It only took me about 20 shots to finally get this one. The clouds were lookin AWESOME, and I wanted to capture it so bad! But that darn sun was not helping me. I finally got the shot though, and I think it turned out pretty good...if I may say so myself... ;)
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And I didn't actually take this last one (Cass did), but it's a winner! Here's Ash and I chillin on some rocks, pretending like we aren't scared s**tless :)
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And right about here.... my camera battery died. GRRRRRR. I totally forgot to charge it before we left, and didn't think it would be a big deal - I didn't know I'd have such an awesome photo op!! So my shoot got cut short. :( I still got a lot of great shots, and I'm happy about that, but I told Ash 2 things - 1) you are bringing me back to the lake, and I will come with a CHARGED camera battery next time & 2) we must now go on monthly photo shoots together! Woo hoo! So once this whole wedding and honeymoon business is all said and done, we will be scheduling our first shoot. So probably August (ok maybe September) be on the look out for the first of many posts about our fun adventures! :)

In the end, I must give a big shout out to Ash's family, who are not only some of the most fun people to hang out with, but incredibly awesome for having us out to their lake lot for the weekend. It was a great time!!!!