A day in the great outdoors!

What could be better than a nice summer adventure in the forest? Well....maybe a nice relaxing summer day in an air-conditioned house! We decided to have a family outing up the Manti La-Sal National Forest. It was a beautiful day, a little hot, but a fun day for fishing, a picnic, and hiking!

We found a nice lake for fishing. It was scenic but I don't think there were any fish in the lake!

We tried and tried to catch a fish but we didn't even get a nibble! Sometimes we have good luck fishing and other times not even one fish!

Next it was time for a hike! We parked one car at the top of the trail and the other car at the end of the trail. It was a total of 5.5 miles and for a prego-mama that is a long hike! Mara enjoyed collecting things along the hike: flowers, rocks, snail shells, sticks...etc.!!

This was a pretty good hike, except it was long! We followed the stream most of the way and saw several water-falls on the hike. 

Caleb hiked part of the hike but needed a few rides along the way! Sometimes he wants to hike on his own, other times he wants to ride! We didn't realize the difficulty of this hike. We thought it was down hill the entire way...little did we know it was up hill AND down hill! Mara did great but she even got tired and needed to ride on her daddy's shoulders! Which meant Caleb wanted me to hold him! Carrying TWO kids is quite the workout!

Along the hike the boys looked for bones...(for Ty's bone collection!) but amazingly enough Nate found a birds nest with eggs in it amid the sagebrush! Only Nate's good eye could have found such a thing!

We FINALLY made it to the car! I didn't think my legs were going to make it! We were all pretty exhausted after such a long hike and I don't think my legs have ever been so sore!!

It was a fun adventure and I'm glad we could spend quality time as a family!