Walk to the Park

Once a week we take Munchkin to gymnastics, and then Buddy Boy and I sit in the car waiting.  It gets crowded in the building, which is anxiety causing, and so we avoid going in.  Now that the weather is improving, however, we can start spending our time outdoors nearby.  Buddy Boy suggested we head to a nearby park to explore last time.  It was a great idea, and we really enjoyed ourselves:

Moab Pics

We had ourselves a mini vacation a couple of weeks ago.  It was Clay's Christmas present.  Ironically, we left on his birthday, so it was kind of a double dose gift!  We camped in Goblin Valley on a Sunday, and went to Canyonlands National Park Monday "on our way" to Moab.  Tuesday was spent at Arches National Park and Wednesday we did a little Arches and then headed home.  

It was an interesting trip.  There was a heat wave in Southeastern Utah at the time, and that made it uncomfortable for the kids, but by Tuesday we were experiencing some nice breezes.  At some point on the trip I got a gluten contamination and spent Wednesday in the car unable to stand or even sit up.  Other than that, the trip was fun.  As usual, we took a lot of pictures:

The above pictures were Goblin Valley.  The night was clear and it was beautiful to see the stars.  It was SO HOT though...we didn't get much sleep at all, which was okay since it gave me a chance to watch the sunrise.

A little bit of Canyonlands.  We didn't explore here as much as Clay would have liked.  It was hot and the poor kids (Buddy Boy especially) were miserable.

We didn't get as many pictures as Arches, especially once I got sick.  There's a few of them though!

Hidden Falls, Mill B South

We did our last hike of the season last weekend.  We loved the hikes, but the kids started getting sick of them, understandably....I think we'd gone on one family hike in the history of our family until this year, when we started going on them weekly, so we apparently got hiked out!

Anyway, I really wanted to do one more while the leaves were changing colors, so we just did a couple short ones, more "walks" than "hikes".

First we went on the Mill B South trail, which leads up to Lake Blanche (Big Cottonwood Canyon by the S curve).  We went up about 1/4 mile to a mini waterfall and had fun taking lots of pictures, as usual.

Buddy Boy had a tough time with this hike, because he wanted to go to Hidden Falls, and we had to deal with a few meltdowns.  Luckily Hidden Falls is just on the other side of the canyon road, so we went through the little parking lot and crossed the street to play over there.

And of course, we didn't go far up enough to see a lot of bright leaves, but we found a few:

Cecret Lake

We decided to try and hike Cecret Lake yesterday.  We'd never been, but we heard it was beautiful, so we decided to try it out.

We weren't able to park close, because up at the Albion Basin there are only two parking lots, both of which fill up fast.  The parking lot for the Cecret Lake hike was full, and we had to park a quarter mile down.  The second we were out of the car Buddy Boy had some major meltdowns, and I wasn't about to walk up a freakin' mountain with him acting like that, so he and I sat in the car while Clay and Munchkin went up.  I was so mad.  I'd been looking forward to seeing this hike for awhile!

Anyway, after about 20 minutes of him kicking, screaming, and scratching (and a lot of stares from passerbys), he finally calmed down.  I told him we could go and find Dad and Munchkin, but only if he would stay calm.  We went through the list:  No hitting.  No screaming.  Nice voice.  Nice hands.  Hold Mom's hand; no running away.  On and on.  He seemed truly calm so we headed up as well.

BEAUTIFUL hike.  I wish I got better pictures to show it, but I only had my phone camera with me.  It got me thinking that maybe we should do an overnight camping trip up there.  It was just really pretty with lots of wildflowers and greenery.  Most of the hike was pretty level, which made it easy.

The final ascent to the lake is really the only part that is steep.  I'll be honest, it made me nervous looking at it, because it looked like it was all on a ledge that would be easy for runaway Buddys to fall down...but we talked it over, decided we would "take it easy and slow like a turtle", and that's what we did.  It wasn't nearly as difficult as I'd expected it to be.

The lake itself...hmmm, I mean it was pretty, but it wasn't quite as amazing as I'd heard.  It didn't help that the mosquitoes were out in droves!!  There were a lot of people there (this is a popular hike), but there was plenty of room to explore, tons of rocks to sit on, and a bunch of chipmunks and squirrels to watch.  We had a good time there!

I have to say, this hike was one of my favorites so far, not because of the destination, but because of the journey.  The kids enjoyed crossing 4 little (teeny tiny) streams, the trail was a nice soft dirt trail, and the scenery was unbeatable.  We enjoyed it just as much as we came down as well.:-)