Family Hike

A few weeks ago, Ellis came home unexpectedly at a very early hour. It just so happened to be beautiful outside, and we decided it was the perfect day for a family hike.  

We thought we should pick a nice short loop...just a little something to give us a breathe of fresh air so the kids could be back in time to get a nap and Ellis could catch up on his work. I said, "No problem, I know just the hike!"

Yeah...

We went on a hike with Kelly and Dan about a year ago, and I thought I remembered it being pretty great. (The fact that it was a year ago should have been the first red flag that maybe we might not end up where I thought we would). But, as you can can see from the pictures, we still had a pretty great time.

Mac was so excited that he pretty much ran the entire time.  Here he is running back to get us...mommy and daddy hike so slow!

Mac kept yelling, "Come on Guys!!!!"

Finally, he found a good little log to sit on as he waited for the rest of us to catch up :-)

Here we are, a few miles in and Mac is still running. Ellis kept offering to put him the backpack, but those little legs just kept going!

Mommy and Corrie just enjoyed the scenery at a nice pace. See that glove Corrie has on? And the hat? Yeah, those went missing for a while before we noticed they were gone.

We finally got to the end of the hike and we realized my memory may have been a little foggy...We came out to the road (wasn't part of my memory), and by this time even Mac was ready for a rest in the backpack. We had no clue where we were, but we were pretty sure we had at least a few miles to hike back up the mountain!

We eventually got tired and desperate enough to start flagging cars down to ask them what mile marker we were actually at. The first car said we were still 5 miles away from where we parked our car. My first thought was "Woah Nelly...this is gonna be a long time hiking along the side of the road!" Thankfully, it turned out that we were only about a mile away. And we got some good pictures of the beautiful views.

And we got a super cute picture of Corrie. I think she knew we would be getting back to the car soon :-)

Remember how I mentioned that we went on a hike a year ago with Kelly and Dan? Well...I guess it's been a about a year since we looked in the pockets of the hiking backpack. These sippy cups were filled with milk at one time...