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As
May was nearing, I told Terra that I had better go and do some hiking
to prepare for the Grand Canyon hike coming up at the end of May.
For the hike, I thought I would take Ethen and go up the dome on the
huachuca mountains. There is not really a trail, but you can make your
way up the dome to the top and there is a "slide" all the way down made
by draining water from the dome. |
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we talked this over, we decided that it would be nice to instead of
doing the dome hike, we should all go as a family on a hike. This
required to change the destination to one that had a trail to
follow. The selection of the Natural Bridge hike in the
Chiricahua Mountains was selected. I have never hiked this trail,
but have driven past the sign before. |
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The
trail was well marked, and fairly moderate. You were able to pass
through sparce vegetation, oaks & Manzinta, and even some Pine
Trees. The trail was 2.4 miles each way, so roughly 5 miles round
trip. We selected Saturday May 2nd as the day we would try it and
took everyone along. |
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Here
is the natural bridge. If you look up at the top of the photo in
the center you will find the bridge. Like most things, photos
really don't capture the events of nature with the same stunning and
spectacular sight they are in real life. The trail started out at
about 5200 feet and went up to just over 5800 feet and then dropped
back down to 5500 feet where the bridge was. The hardest part of
the trail was the beginning - from 5200 feet you immediately climb up
to the 5800 feet and then from there it is pretty easy. I think
it was quite a feat for the kids to make. Here are the ages below
of all the trecksters: Janelle 0.5 years Landen 4 Rachel 7 Kyle 9 Ethen 11 |
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Terra
actually carried Janelle on her back with a back-pack designed to tote
kids around in. I don't know how much Janelle really enjoyed the
trip, as she slept for some, and was semi-awake for other parts.
She was up when we arrived at the end of the trail for a while, but
then dozed back off as we wandered back. We brought some gold
fish crackers for the kids to munch on and when Janelle would start to
squawk we would give her some of the crackers to suck on and that
seemed to satisfy her for a while. |
| Ethen
is still fairly excited to head to the Grand Canyon, and as he is
excited, Kyle really wants to go. Kyle wanted to use this hike as
a statement of his readiness to attempt to conquer the canyon, but I
think he needs to be a bit older before he attempts it. 5 miles
and 800 feet of elevation gain is pretty easy as far as hiking
goes. The canyon is more like 20 miles and 5,000 feet of
elevation gain (or at least the trail we will be hiking is). |
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Landen
did very well on this trip. Much better than I thought he would
do. I thought that I would get to carry him out, but he managed
to walk it all on his own. He did have much more energy one the
way in than on the way out, but did great. He did talk of not
liking how long the trip was and wanted to get back into the car when
we arrived at the bridge. It took us 1.5 hours to hike in and
another 1.5 hours to hike out. We stayed at the bridge about 0.5
hours and ate lunch. We started hiking at 10:30 and arrived back
at the car at 2:00 pm. Here you can see a bit of a gap between
Landen and the rest of the kids. We let the kids lead, and a time
or two when the trail crossed a wash they would follow the wash and not
the trail, but aside from that did just fine. When Ethen, Kyle
& Rachel noticed that Landen was dragging behind they would stop
and wait for him. When Landen would catch up to them they would
start walking again, and this did not make Landen very happy. He
wanted to stop and get a drink and sit for a while (as were his older
siblings) but they just wanted to make it back to the car. It was
very entertaining. |
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Some
of the trail went through parts of the national monument that had
burned a few years ago with the fire that swept through the Chiricahua
Mountains. Landen would comment that the burned oak trees looked
like dragon trials lying around next to the trail. Once we all made it back to the car, I thought they would sleep as we journeyed back to Benson, but not so. They were all up and excited. I guess it will take about 10 miles to tire them out. They all mentioned that they would like to do it again. Terra really had a good time, and even though she got a little sunburn on her neck she really enjoyed the hike. The last hike that we made as a family was up to the airplane crash on the Gullaro mountains about 1.5 years ago. Landed and Rachel didn't make that trip (and Janelle wasn't around either). We will have to keep the tradition of hiking going. It was fun to have everyone there and see some new sights. |  |
| One last story: After we returned home, we did laundry. After the laundry Terra folded all of the clothes and asked the kids to put up their clothes. Ethen routinely gets himself into little fits. This was one of those times. Terra asked him to empty the trash, and he didn't want to, so he went into his room and threw himself onto his bed. He was in this state when Terra asked him to put up his clothes. His response was "I'm not doing it! They can just sit there and rot!" Terra then replied that if he didn't want to put them up, she was going to give them away. Fine! was the response shouted from the bedroom. Terra took the clothes and then placed them into the back of the van and told him she would donate them on her next trip to the second hand store. About 25 minutes later (when everyone else was eating Popsicles) Ethen wanted to know where his clothes were. Terra told him they were in the back of the van so out he want to find them. Here he is bringing them back into the house. Once the clothes were put up, he wanted a Popsicle (earlier he told me that this kind was gross and he didnt' want) but he had to empty the trash before he could obtain one. After I was told that the Popsicles were gross (mind you that I am also not a big fan of Popsicles either) I asked Terra if he didn't like this kind. They were bullet style Popsicles, and I actually like them. Terra told me that these were also Ethen's favorite kind and he must have still been in a mood. After he dumped the garbage, he also enjoyed a Popsicle. Parenting is so entertaining at times... |
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