Hiking

Most of the people we saw hiking yesterday had something that looked similar to this.



I'm sure they were packed with the necessary hiking items....water bottles, snacks, sunscreen, first aide kit, rain poncho.....

Our backpack looked like this.

So classy.

Let it be known that I tried to talk the rest of my family into using the fit-for-a-regular-sized-person St. Louis Cardinals backpack.

Because that would have made us look so much closer to a die-hard hiking family.

We did, however, have one family member who was nearly fully equipped.

Hiking stick.

Hiking shoes (that he insisted on wearing).

Not-so-hiking clothes.



Those shoes must have been magic. He endured the 2 1/2 hour trail pretty well.

The boys were pretty proud of the fact that we had been "way up there" and had hiked "way down here".


What they didn't know at that point was that we pretty much had to climb "way up there" again to get to the end of the trail.

So we took a short rest.

This was the beautiful view from "way up there".

Testing out the timer on our camera.

We made it back, having to endure a manageable number of "are we there yet?"'s.

To which we honestly answered, "we think so" every single time.

To which we were wrong the first 10 times the question was asked.

The trail was just a tad longer than we thought.