One of MANY boating stories...

We used to go camping and boating a lot. We couldn't really afford to do anything else. While everyone else was flying to exotic places, we had our own fun in Bear Lake, Lake Powell, and Utah Lake. We used to be Gold Members at a resort in Bear Lake called Blue Water Beach Resort. It was wonderful going there for a few reasons:

• the church we attended on Sundays was always jam packed. With so many tourists visiting for the summer, we all filled the hallways and extra classrooms. It took their poor deacons about an hour to pass the sacrament (if not longer)
• We always bought Raspberry shakes at LaBeau's. They had the most mouth-watering shakes alive! (They were always really crowded, so you'd have to take a number. When the guy yelled out a number, my dad happened to be standing right by him and got that screamed into his hear. He gave us a funny look and yelled back jokingly, "SCOTT!" -- an inside joke/quote from the movie, Austin Powers, that had just recently come out.)
• The city was full of bike paths that Tenille and I used to ride bikes/roller blades on. 
• It was just a beautiful area. A lot of times my parents would go "cabin hunting." Ya, they still do to this day, but have yet to purchase anything. haha

Anyway, two particular events stand out to me about Bear Lake. 

1. Melissa was in her teenage years and boy crazy, like most other girls that age. She flirted with boys, and got invited up to a party. Tenille and I tagged along (probably to keep her in line--my mom's spy girls). The boy's house was on top of a big mountain, with a highway that ran below it. The boys decided it would be funny to launch water balloons and hit cars. So we did. I can't remember exactly what happened (whether or not we got caught), but it sure was a lot of fun.

2. My parents liked to go to the Pickleville Playhouse dinner theater. It was a little more pricey, so the kids always stayed behind. One night it stormed (like it always did on a Banks Family camping trip...) and our boat that was anchored at the beach started blowing away. Lance ran to the theater to get Mom and Dad, and luckily we were able to save our boat. Other people weren't so lucky. I remember seeing other people's boats the following morning washed up on the beach. They spent hours digging it out only to find their propeller had been destroyed. 

We went to Bear Lake just about every summer (a couple times a summer). And every time we went my parents always had short tempers. I used to wonder why they would get so grumpy sometimes until I grew up, had my own family, and had to pack our whole family for a camping trip, too. Not. Easy.

As the years went on, more and more tenters transferred over to motorhomes. We used to complain that they were just lazy and that wasn't considered "real camping." A few years after that, we became those "lazy" people, too. ;)