Kamas - old fashioned little town

 We normally go to Southern Utah around this time of year for a mini-family vacation.  Noah's parents bought a house in Kamas (near Park City) and fixed it all up for an Airbnb.  Well, they let us "test" it out for a weekend so we went there instead.

Kamas is a small, with a grand total of about 2,100 population. It consists of about 4 streets, a huge donut store in a Chevron gas station, a pizza place and a burger place and a grocery store.  It's mainly a stop for the many people that go camping or visit the high Uintah's - Utah's highest mountains.  Kamas is about 30 mins from Park City, but it feels like it's hours away.  It's so peaceful and quiet with easy access to Mirror Lake and beautiful hikes.

We drove up to Mirror Lake, which is about 45 minutes up in the Uintah's. Mirror Lake sits at an impressive 10,500 elevation and has snow most of year, with only July and August where you can be sure there will be little to no snow.  There is an easy 1.5 mile loop hike (walk) around the lake which we did.

Bald Mountain - there is no vegetation on it

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The next day, we went on a hike about 20 mins away, in the "low" Uintah's that was spectacular - it had streams, waterfalls and dense vegetation.  It's called Nobblett's Creek Trail - if you're in the area, make it one of your stops.

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There are some even smaller towns around Kamas, one being Peoa with a population of about 250. If you're an instagrammer, the super famous 'Ballarina Farm' lady and her family live there, on their huge diary farm who are multi-millionaires. Look them up on your Insta. They were at the rodeo as their kids were participating.  Her husband is the son of David Neeleman who started Jet Blue. 

Well, it just so happens Peoa was having their city "Ranch Rodeo" that night and it was free, so we went to check it out.  If you don't know what a Ranch Rodeo is, like we didn't, it's a rodeo but the events are a little different.  They are events that you would do living on a farm - chasing animals that got out of their fence, shooting coyotes away from the chicken coop, and hide racing, which was the favorite event of the night.  

 One event was cow herding - there were about 30 cows loose, with numbers on them, with three cows of each number 1-10.  A random number was called and a team of three, each on horses, had to find the three cows with the same number and herd them into the other side of the arena, without any of the other cows going with them.  It was pretty interesting to watch.

There was the "catch a chicken" event, where several chickens were let loose for the kids, and whoever caught the chicken got to keep it. (take it home and fry it up)

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Then there was the shooting competition, where while riding a horse, they had to shoot  several balloons without missing any.  And it was timed, so they had to balance time against accuracy.  It was a fun one to see.

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But the most interesting one and fun to watch, was the hide racing.  I'm not quite sure how this would help you on a ranch, but it didn't matter - it was good!  Only the little kids could participate.  An adult on a horse would gallop up next to the kid, who would jump on a leather hide, and then it was a race to the finish line.  

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We had a great time "testing" out the soon to be Airbnb.  We had family dinners, burgers, popcorn and lots of treats..watched movies, played games, hiked and had a great time!  The only thing we missed was having Marissa and Matt there!