Wilson Ward Running Club – Crawfish Camp


It was mostly out of curiosity and partly because I wanted to get into better shape. A few friends and I started up a running club a few years ago. We would drive down to City Creek Canyon, park at the base and run to the top. That was the idea anyway. I did not join those who made it to the top. At first I made it about a quarter mile. After a month or so I could get to the mile mark but run/walking. A month after that I could get to the mile marker and then I could continue on to the 1.5 mile marker. I don’t know that I got much further than that. The others in the group kept moving on up and in the time it would take me to get to the 1.5 mile mark and back they would run about 3 miles up and back. Running down the hill so often caused me knees to really hurt so after a while of running with the club I gave up the mountain and would just run around the park. The park was only 1 mile from my home and it was very nice.

During all this running I took on a few 5K races. I consistently did better on my time with each race and I really enjoyed running for a long time. The group that ran grew quickly then shrank, but we were all friends and since we were all members of the Wilson Ward we called ourselves the Wilson Ward Running Club. After the running died down we were all still members of the club, which then went camping together. It’s great to have good friends like we had. Unfortunately it was only a few years from this camp that everyone moved away. I still speak with DP (Dave Pace) but the rest have moved to California or back east. So, this is all that I have to remember some of the best of times with the Running Club.

Crawdads are disgusting. They look gross, they smell gross, there’s not enough meat on them to make the effort worth anything… why the camp was based around crawdads I’ll never know. I had the misfortune of watching the group rip the crawdad’s apart. I would not participate. I would not eat them either. They just picked the crawdad’s up and ripped them in half. One half went in a bowl and the other half in the garbage. They cooked them in a giant pot along with a lot of corn. The corn was decent. I did not taste the crawdads. I don’t like sea food – this includes fresh water lake animals.

The camp was a great time other than the food. My favorite activity while camping is sitting in my chair starring at the fire. If there is not fire I’ll stare at the fire pit. I love coming home smelling like a camp fire. I’ll sometimes stand in the smoke just to get more of the smell all over me. I have a really good recipe that I found a while ago for a dutch oven breakfast. Actually I had a recipe. I don’t know where it is, but basically just get some bacon, chop it up and cook it up. When it’s mostly done throw some sliced potato’s in the pot let them cook and put some summer sausage in there as well. Along with all that throw some eggs in the mix. Stir it up well and make sure that everything gets cooked well done. Put some cheese on it to top it off and serve it up. It’s the best breakfast I’ve ever had. On this camp we just had pancakes.

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