Hiking

Will finally found me the little hip/waist pack thingy that I've been looking for ever since I saw one on some granola-looking man when we were at Mesa Verde. I've had the interest in backpacking/hiking for a little while now. The kids sure hinder things, but today they really did quite well.

I felt like a pack mule- and I looked like one too!

Unbeknownst to Will, today is the last Saturday before school starts. He found that out at the end of our morning hike. We pushed through to make it a Super Saturday of Family Fun to End the Summer. And we threw in a special lunch for Julie's "birthday lunch" too.
The kids played on this fallen tree for a very long time, both on the way up and on the way back. I wanted to climb on it too, but didn't.

I'll note that the kids were whining and disgruntled before we even left the house. They didn't want to go. And I didn't realize Calvin has an injured leg; like a huge goose-egg, but on his shin. He was half-limping a lot.
This was break time.

So, anyway, Will picked the place for our first hike. It was up through the Devil's Canyon campground to the Wagon Wheel trail. We had a snack at half a mile. The incline was a pretty good one. We let the kids meander and play and we weren't trying to win any races. We made it .8 of a mile up. So, really, we all did about 1.6 miles total.A tired pup and a tired Amelia....the dog napped, the children did not!

We went over to Monticello and had lunch at one of their parks. It was quite nice. The kids played there for about 90 minutes. For once, we didn't rush them. {This was in honor of Julie's birthday since we realized Will won't be in town on the actual day.} After that, we headed back over the mountain on the very rough mountain "road". This was quite rougher than I thought. We did another small-ish hike on our way home.This is the place where the kids and Will went canoeing and swimming. And where Aaron's family cooked out with us. As we were coming by, we had to get a picture. There was water here.....before.....