up up and away

Yesterday was Veteran's day- A big THANK YOU to all armed forces, past a present- so the kids and Anna had the day off from school/work. Our friends, the Bocanegras, have a 12 year old son, Joseph, who needed to do a 5 mile hike with a map and compass for his final requirement to earn his second class rank as a Boy Scout, and invited us to join them as they helped Joe with his requirement. We said yes.

They chose the Vivian Creek trail in Forest Falls. It's 2.5 miles in, so 5 miles round trip- perfect. The trail was recommended by someone in our ward who has taken his young family there, and said it wasn't too bad. Though he did mention it has a thousand-foot incline the second half of the hike in, but that his kids made it without a problem. Sounded fine.

Sure enough, the first mile or so was really easy- mostly flat, then we got to the switch-backs. There was no way Tegan was going to do it, so Anna and I took turns carrying her. I carried her most of the way, and had her on my shoulders during that time. It wasn't too bad.

I think that's our first time having the kids on that kind of trail. I'm talking about the kind that is pretty much strait down on the down side, so that was pretty stressful to have to really keep an eye on where the kids were walking on the path. We had to keep reminding them to stay close to the mountain side.

In all reality, the kids did AWESOME. There was little to no whining and complaining. Liam was like a mountain goat, and was in the front group for most of the time, and even handled the frequent reminders well. Duncan and Jennan did great as well. Duncan was in the front pack a lot, and Jennan kept up really well. But the switch-backs, and the steepness were taking there toll on all of us. Plus, since none of us had been there before, we didn't know how much further we needed to go.

So, at one point, it was a little after 1pm, and we hadn't had lunch yet, so we stopped at an open flat spot and ate our lunches. (Duncan looks like he's pretending to be asleep, but I think he just got caught blinking. Pretty funny.)


You can kind of tell from this shot how high up we are.

While we ate, there were two groups that passed us. One coming up, and one going down. They both pretty much said it wasn't much further, so after we were done, we headed up the trail again.

It really wasn't much farther. If we had known, we would have just kept going and ate at the creek. But now we know for next time... next time?

We let the kids play for about 40 minutes.

Here the adults are ready to start heading back.

There was this cool hollow tree trunk, so the kids took a picture in it.

Here's our posse.

All in all, it was a fun hike. It was challenging without being too strenuous. I think the enjoyment of the hike had a lot to do with the kids doing so well in so many ways. Had they been complaining, and struggling, it would have made it more of a headache.

Side story: While we were eating on the trail, there was a couple with their dogs heading back down the trail. As they were approaching our group, the guy starts saying stuff like, "No way. It really is a small world.", and Anna started saying the same stuff back. Turns out, it was a geologist she met while at that GSA meeting in Portland. He went to UCR, Anna teaches in Riverside. They did some of the same things at GSA, stayed at the same hotel, etc. So it was really funny to them to again run into each other in some random place.

Side Story II: We saw a handful of people with dogs on the trail and at the trail head. While we were almost done, there was a couple with two dogs. One of which was a white bulldog. So very cool. We were missing Angus at the moment.