Cold Hike

I've been wanting to get up into the mountains. Today after the kids got home, I helped Sophi and Natalie practice violin, and then we left. I wasn't sure where I was going, but ended up driving up the canyon. I was thinking Lisa Falls, but the parking lot was closed, so we kept going and ended up at Red Pine. I've been on hikes here and taken plenty of picture in years past (for example 2015 and 2017 - and I still haven't done anything with those pics, so I wasn't worried about getting more photos of the colors, but did get one of the kiddos.

It was so cold that we ended up hardly noticing the mountain colors, we were too busy trying to keep our fingers warm. So it was kind of a fail, but hey, I tried.

Lily said she recognized it when I said it was where we took family pictures in 2014 when Natalie was a baby. It was about as cold as it was that day, just without the snow. I said let's just go to the bridge. Then we just were going to cross the bridge. Then we were just going to walk for a little bit...

We quickly wanted to turn around, but since Owen was in the front, we let him call the shots for a bit, and he insisted we keep going until we see the ducks. Owen kept saying "No, we need to go mountains! We need to see the ducky!" He thought we were on the Bell Canyon trail that he did last week with Corey and that he was going to the reservoir again. We would have had to hike an hour on this trial though before we'd see any water. But we kept going a little more and a few minutes more, hoping he'd let us turn around without a fight (I wouldn't be able to carry him and Peter)

Sophi trying to convince Owen to turn around. "Aren't you cold?!" I carried Peter, he kept me warm

Finally I had him pose for a picture again and then we started to walk back down.

Thanks for coming with me, you fun little people.

Lily told Owen she'd carry him. She wasn't able to carry him for long, but atleast it got us headed back to the car! Daniel and his pink nose. I squatted down to get more on his level for a photo, but then he copied me and he squatted too. He's such a cute kid.

A few pictures of aspens...

 I think we'll go on a drive somewhere tomorrow where we can see some oranges and reds

 A lovely blue fall sky.

We talked about the pioneers in Handcart Companies, and how fortunate we were to know that warmth was just a short walk away, unlike them who slept in the cold and snow for many days. And once they were "rescued" they still had to walk miles in the snow to get to where the supply wagons were! We got back in the car, I put the heater on high and soon everyone was comfortable. We saw the sun set.

And before we were out of the canyon, Natalie was telling me she was hot and to turn off the heater.

Tomorrow I think we'll just go for a drive