After our crazy first full week of school during the third full week of August, we were all more than ready for a break. I had been pretty stressed out that week and Terry took pity on me. He mercy-hiked me. I need that. Something about leaving the house and getting under the sun really resets my system. I love being out in God's creation.
We drove towards the southern hills and hiked Iron Creek #15. It'd been on my list for a while and when a friend hiked it this summer and posted pictures, it quickly went to the front of the queue.
The main draw for me was the creek. Our kids love playing in water. You could see the first creek crossing from the very beginning of the trail.
Bam! The kids were already loving it even though there had been a ton of complaining when the announcement about the hike was made.
I opted to keep my feet dry so as to keep rocks out and so took the slender plank bridges. This photo was from atop the first one.
Look at how beautiful! Now that it's fall it would be even more impressive with those aspens which are currently a perfectly yellow golden color.
It was such a pretty little creek.
More walking.
Second creek crossing.
We spent a lot of time just chilling at the crossings.
Luna does not love the water. It's kind of a bummer but at least she likes to play fetch, unlike Snap dog.
Evie, on the other hand, loves the water.
A quick time lapsed video.
This was the third creek crossing. Noah's face cracks me up.
Terry patiently waiting while the kids played endlessly.
And on we went but this was looking behind us. The clouds were low that day but we could still see the pretty rock walls around us.
Noah and Evie were always leading us.
We finally let Luna off the leash and she had such fun. She's actually pretty obedient.
Tossing rocks into the creek down the bank.
Luna waiting patiently for Terry and Ezra to catch up.
Our fourth creek crossing.
Luna was forced to get wet but quickly found her way to a dry creek side rock.
The littles followed Terry up the creek a little ways.
And going again.
Our fifth crossing.
Ezra spent a lot of time wading up the creek towards a little waterfall that I was sat next to and throwing rocks into it.
Samuel near the waterfall (it's above his head).
I heard bumblebees are an endangered species or something but I see them everywhere. Well, this one might not be quite the right kind, but I do see them every day on my zinnias.
Our sixth crossing had this pretty rock wall beyond it.
After about two miles total (?) we came to this genuine large bridge.
Looking south.
Looking north.
From the other side.
I thought the granite wall of rock was just cool, especially with the creek going by it.
So this was our seventh creek crossing. But actually, I thought I remembered we crossed eight times. I don't know anymore.
I love this photo of us. Noah took it and the rest of the kids had been told to get off to the right out of the frame. At this moment Evie was just realizing she had disobeyed and was in the picture. Ha!
We hung out there for a while but it was starting to sprinkle so we had to high tail it out of there. It was a good thing we dawdled on the way up because we had no time on the way down.
There are those pretty rocks again, this time on our way back down.
Here's Terry and Ezra crossing a bridge and avoiding the water. And that's one of my last pictures. From there Terry and Evie tried to find a geocache but the service was too poor.
Then our van made that same weird noise as when we were coming back from Minnesota in July. Terry finally took the van into the shop and they discovered the problem was an AC condenser relay. Apparently the AC was running all the time and never turning off, thus basically wearing out the system. What we took to be smoke was actually freon coming out. So far the van has ran fine after that part was replaced. Thankful it wasn't a bigger deal!
