Hiking

While I was in New Mexico, my dad heard of a wonderful place to go hiking from a guy at church. He said at about 2 miles up there is a place where a river just appears from the side of the mountain, and that if you went just a little further you could see where the river disappears into the mountain.
We thought it would be an excellent idea to go hiking up there, but I really had no idea how long it would take little kids to hike the 2 miles in and back. I do believe it was an all day adventure!

The very bad news is that after all the money we spent to fix my camera, it was having issues focusing... it was very random, so some of the pictures are great- and some you can tell are not quite right.

Here are all the little troopers at the start of the hike. Freshly fed and watered, and very excited for the adventure.

This is just one of many, and increasingly frequent rest stops. The kids are still happy, and once they refreshed with water they were ready to go again.

Benjamin was such a good sport about the hiking, and wanted to walk most of it by himself. Although he was in the back of the pack, he really didn't ask to be carried until we were about halfway back down. Nana and Papa were very good to stay in the back with him. It could be that they were just avoiding the tortuous singing that I was putting the front crew through (which ended up consisting of the kids and Daniel....poor Daniel!)

These pretty butterflies were all over the trails, I'm glad we got to see one still enough to get a picture :) My sister also got a picture of the deer that were up there too!

The boys were very unsure about this water crossing at first, but it was very sturdy and what boy doesn't love to throw rocks into a river? :) It quickly became the favorite spot! That is, until they saw the source of the water.

This however, was Benjamin's favorite spot...

We missed the first fork in the trail that led to where the water comes out, so our first stop was up at the top where the water went in. It was really cool to see, and the pictures just don't show enough of the surroundings.
Here is the outside of the Cave...

This is us climbing down into the rocks...

Yes, even I went down :) Water was dripping from the crack in the ceiling, and it really narrowed down... too claustrophobic for me.

It was a fun hike, and we didn't hear complaining until about halfway back down... boy, the last 20 minutes was definitely the longest! The kids were very worn out that night though :)