It used to be a tradition in the Hawkins family that once a year all the men would ditch their wives and kids, wander into the woods, and "fish" for 3 days. I had a hard time believing that any one man could do nothing but fish for 3 days straight. I had to investigate. For this years trip, I invited myself along with "the men". His sister tried to talk me out of it by saying, "Wouldn't like to go shopping instead?" Humm, tough choice.We left on a Thursday afternoon after Bevan and I got off work. Since we were heading up Wolf Creek Pass, we met Lloyd (his father) and Bryan (his brother) at the cabin. We drove up to Grandview trail head and started off for the Grandaddy Basin in the High Uinta Wilderness. Instead of going into a travel log I thought I would just write specific unique observations from my backpacking experience with "the men."
#1 Men eat WELL in the wilderness. It's not about suffering with bagels, instant oatmeal, and granola bars. They packed in 2 dozen eggs, 1 pound of bacon, pancake mix, syrup, hamburgers + buns, hot dogs + buns, turkey, peanut butter, jelly, 2 loaves of bread, spaghetti and meat sauce, dried mashed potatoes, soup, candy, muffins, and sandwich cookies. We contributed bagels, apples, chopped cantaloupe, candy bars, and granola bars. I thought we'd be living off the lake, like in the old Parent Trap, eating trout for every meal. I think I gained weight on this wilderness trip.#2 Men really do fish the WHOLE TIME! They wake up at 5:30, fish until breakfast, go back out, fish until lunch, take a nap, fish until dinner, and fish until it gets too dark to see. I wanted to go exploring or something, but the only time we would go hiking was to get to another lake so they could fish some more!
#3 Men don't tell other men where the good fishing is. The lake we camped at the whole time was called Marsell Lake. There's no trail going to it. You need either an excellent sense of direction and a map or a GPS unit. Bryan had the latter. We were the only people at that lake for 3 days. There were sooooo many fish in it! I mean, hundreds and hundreds. Lloyd said that the fish won't get any bigger until many of them are caught. We passed a man and his son on our way out. Lloyd and Bryan rambled off the condition of every single lake we visited EXCEPT Marsell. We'll probably never 
see this lake again. These men could probably not even find this lake even if they tried to. So what's the harm of telling these two guys? Men have this fear that the sweet spot will get spoiled. The fish will be gone, and never restocked. All experiences will be sub-par from here on out. I, on the other hand, just wanted to be helpful.The trip ended up being really fun. We ended up catching and eating our own fish. The hike out didn't take as long as I thought (always glad when that happens). I can't wait until next year!
