What a great way to spend Sunday morning!  We woke up and began to get ready for the adventure of the week – a hike with the Jorgenson’s to Lake 22.  Unfortunately the night before, Audrey and Kyler came down with the flu so Karissa and the sick ones needed to take it easy and stay home.  Thanks to Mama for letting the three of us head out on what proved to be quite the adventure.

We got to the trail head just after ten and were the 2nd and 3rd cars to arrive, so we basically had the place to ourselves on the way up.  Caleb and Rylee were real troopers as we set out on a fairly steep trail looking to gain 1300ft or so on our way up 2.7 miles to the lake.  We started off with a brisk  pace as each of the kids were eager to go hiking.  Once the trail got a bit steeper, the pace slowed up a bit, but still moving quite well.  Instead of stopping for breaks, the kids munched on snacks lovingly prepared by their mama and sipping on water that Daddy carried for them.  Without any backpacks, they were moving along quite well.  We got to a bridge that overlooked a cool waterfall and stopped for some photo ops. All the while Isaac was doing great as Todd carried him in the ergo backpack.

We continued on our way and shortly found ourselves navigating some snow on the trail.  The kids loved it, and Maggie even preferred the snow to the previous loose rock.  With snow, followed by loose jagged rock, followed by more snow, and an increasingly steep grade, the trail began to get a bit treacherous.  Somewhere along the lines Isaac got a bit fussy, but all he needed was to be in the ergo with his mama so he could play with her hair.  I didn’t get a picture of it, but it was pretty cute watching a little hand sneak up from the depths of the ergo to grab his mama’s hair.  We finally reached a place that not only was a good stopping place for lunch with a great view, but it really was about as far as the little ones could go.  I figured we went just over 2 miles on the trail…pretty close to the top, but still had some killer views of the surrounding Creation!

Lunch was interesting.  Caleb decided that his tummy was not feeling well (he was the first one to go down with the flu, but he had been feeling better up until this moment) so he chose not to eat his sandwich and only picked out the cheese.  Karissa had made amazing sandwiches with pickles, cheese, mayo, mustard, pepper, turkey, and other yummies.  The other fun part of our break was when Maggie decided to lay down on her back to cool off and began to slide down the hill.  She went about 12 feet gaining pretty good speed before she realized what was happening and began to dig in with her claws to arrest her fall.  She has her own built in set of ice axes which is pretty cool.  She promptly came back up the hill only to do it a few more times while Rylee and Caleb giggled almost uncontrollably.

All in all it was a great time on the trail.  I can’t wait to go next weekend if possible, this time with the whole family.  There are plenty of great trails off the mountain loop highway up past Granite Falls if you are interested.  Enjoy the pictures below for a taste of our adventure.