It felt like it had been forever since we went for a hike, but it's been so hot that I haven't wanted to be outside for a long time. It finally was overcast and in the low 80s today, so we headed to Big Cottonwood Canyon for a short, although quite steep, hike.
The fall colors were so pretty up there!
It was a very rocky climb, and a few times Cameron was hesitant to climb over the boulders in our path. The first time we made a short detour to enjoy the stream, however, he perked right up. He flung a rock into the water and exclaimed, "There's some drama for you!" Such a goofy kid.
We stopped in a random area and all found a flat rock to sit on for our picnic.
Kenzie thought it was funny to pose eating her sandwich, so there's that, I guess.
Cameron barely stopped throwing rocks to eat his sandwich. He told me, "Eating an Uncrustable on a rock, while throwing rocks, is the best ever! Thanks for making us go on this hike, Mom!" (I liked that. I made him go, like he didn't happily come along!)
After lunch, we had a little more energy to try going a bit further up.
Parker had a hard time at first with us leaving the trail to explore, and kept making little comments like, "But the trail goes that way..." and "I don't know if we should climb on the rocks." I think we all have to step outside our comfort zone a bit (I know I fear I'll get us lost with my horrible sense of direction, so I study each hike beforehand and am always quite relieved when we make it back to the van!). Anyways, it didn't take too long before Parker was wandering around on the rocks admiring the view.
We turned around here, because it was just steeper and steeper up the mountain, and Cameron declared we were "satisfied" with how far we'd gone.
Heading back down was certainly faster, although at a few spots we had to sit down to scoot back down the rocks we'd climbed over. Every once in a while Cameron would call back to me, "How are your bear feet doing?" (He long ago assigned us all spirit animals, and I get to be Mama Bear!)
Parker really liked this shale slide right by the road, so we took one last picture before getting back in the van. Then we headed back so the kiddos could finish up homework, since technically Fridays are online school days. Generally they can do their work in no time at all (most of their time is spent procrastinating) so I don't feel too badly taking them away from their homework for a couple of hours to get outside. We didn't pass a single other person on our hike - we could see some mountain climbers in the distance and heard them calling out to each other a few times, but otherwise it was just us. Always nice to just get out and pretend the world is normal!
