Something Fun

At the beginning of the summer I promised the kids that I would fight against my urge to be a work-aholic father and that we would do "something fun" every week as a family. Logan has really latched on to this idea. Almost every day he asks, "Are we going to do something fun today?" Then we all have to remember if we have fulfilled the weekly goal or not. It has been a great experience.

So far we have gone to the theater, hiked, swam, partied with family, had game nights, had movie nights and played baseball. While I can honestly say that I have enjoyed every minute of it, I can not say that I would have had the discipline to put the other things in my life aside long enough to do these weekly activities without the promise and Logan's follow-through. Sad, isn't it?

So last Saturday it was 5:00 and we still hadn't done "Something Fun." Time was of the essence. We had talked about hiking to a local waterfall, but I only had a vague idea of where the trail even began, and it was supposed to be a decent length (2 miles). In the end I threw caution to the wind (I'm really good at that these days) and threw some bagels, a first aid kit and some water in a backpack and we all jumped in the van to go hiking, sans Heather of course. These days she isn't hiking anywhere. OK, honestly, she isn't hiking anywhere on any day. It isn't her thing.

So we went hiking for our family outing and Heather went to watch Hairspray with her mom. It works for us. It was 6 PM by the time we had begged our way past the ranger station and found the trail head. (I didn't have any cash to pay the $3 fee. Whoops.) As usual the boys were dancing around with excitement at the prospect of "doing something fun."

As we started out, we began to pass other hikers on the trail, all heading out, not in. More than one motherly hiker shook her head at me when they saw us just starting out with 4 year-old Trenton in tow. No less that three of these kind ladies took time to tell me that it was farther away than I thought. I thanked them for their generous words and told the boys to march faster.

Forty-five minutes in I started to get a little worried, and told myself that we would turn around if we didn't find the falls in the next thirty minutes. Logan, being both our leader and the clumsiest of the bunch, was starting to get tired and tripped and bumped into things regularly. He seemed to make progress down the trail by bouncing off of trees, rocks and other organic material (the trail was open for horses.)
At 55 minutes we finally saw the falls and in an hour flat we had completed the two mile hike in.

We rested on a big rock and ate our blueberry bagels before taking off our footwear and testing the stream at the base of the waterfall. There are some things in life that are near impossible to describe, and one of them is the ice-cold, yet refreshing feeling of melted snow running over your feet after a hike. Add in some pain from the jagged fragments of rock that lined the bottom of the stream and it made for a sweet-and-sour combination that you just can't get in any other way. It was great.
We spent about 30 minutes resting and playing in the water, and then I knew it was time to go. We hadn't been on the trail 10 minutes when Trenton announced that he just wanted to go home and lay down. The rest of the return trip was a struggle. It was a combination of stumbling, murmuring and coaxing, mingled with the sporadic discoveries little boys make. We had the opportunity to poke at several caterpillars, collect a single wildflower for Mom (yes, you may report me to the Forest Service or whoever for taking one flower) and acquire a cocoon to bring home and hatch in a jar.

The return trip took us 90 minutes, and it was pretty dark when we got back to the car, but we made it and we had a great time. I don't have any exciting news from this little outing. No one experienced any medical trauma, although Collin's arm is still broken of course, and it was uneventful. For us that is what made it a great trip, so I wanted to share it.