First day of school

 Today was the first day of school for these two. Hayden is starting his Senior year! This semester he only has 1-2 classes a day and he gets to sleep in. The other picture is his first day of kindergarten picture and it just makes my heart squeeze to see the difference. How quickly time flies! 

Josh started his first day of Middle school. The parking lot was under construction so we couldn't even go into the school and figure out his classes. Luckily today is just for 7th graders and the school promised to take them around and help them figure everything out!

Sawyer is just working until he leaves on his mission, and McKinley starts her Senior year at UVU on Thursday.

Day 6 and 7 Colorado

Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park

On Sunday we visited the South Rim of the Canyon. It was pretty cool to see in person. It was mostly pull outs and overview sites. You have to get a special permit for any hike into the Canyon and the short hike was going to be 6+ miles which I wasn't excited for. So we skipped it. 

McKinley and I did a shorter trail that had a lot of trees while the rest of the group sat in the car. 

Painted Wall

On Monday we drove over the North Rim of the Canyon for another view point and just did a few pull outs. Still pretty cool, and much less crowded or developed on this side. 

The formation below was called Camel Rock. 

Then we drove home! Good bye Colorado!

Day 5 Colorado

 Mesa Verde National Park

We droved a few hours to Mesa Verde this morning. We stopped along some of the pull outs to see the archeological sites and dwellings in the cliffs. In the afternoon we had a reservation to do the Cliff Palace tour. The last time we did this Josh was just under 2. We were able to empathize with another young family there whose child was crying and miserable. It brought flashbacks of our last visit there. This time was much easier!

Then we did the Petroglyph trail hike. It was only a few miles round trip, but it felt like it was a hundred degrees and that made it one of the more physically exhausting hikes we've done.

The vultures were literally following us much of our hike. I think they could see how exhausted we were too!

Day 4 Colorado

Great Sands National Park

We left in the morning and drove to Great Sands National Park. We rented a sand sled in town and headed out to the park before the Visitors Center closed. We spent a nice evening in the park and left when the storm moved close to us.

Day 3 Colorado

Day 3

Rocky Mountain National Park

Today we let the boys rest at the condo. Yesterdays hike really did them in!

Today we hiked to Sky Pond. We went past Alberta Falls to the Loch...

Then past Timberline Falls and scrambling up and over the falls to get to Glass Lake.

After Glass Lake we continued just a little bit farther to Sky Pond.

Then back down again. We crossed paths with a little group of Elk that we had to wait a few minutes for as the left the pathway so we could get past.

It was 9.7 miles today!!