Saturday, July 7, 2012

the fourth

We’ve been wanting to do more family hikes this year because the girls are getting bigger and because we’re not going on any big vacations this summer. Hikes and picnics at new places is a pretty good alternative, plus it’s basically free. So, on the fourth of July, inspired by my friend Dee, whose family recently hiked some pretty major stuff down in the National Parks in Utah, we decided to tackle something known as a great and somewhat strenuous family hike – Pine & Cedar Lakes.

Here are the girls at the beginning of the hike:

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Look at that. The sun is shining. Everyone is smiling. We’re going to see two lakes!

And now here’s everyone after the hike:

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Look at that. The sun is no longer shining. No one is smiling. We sort of caught glimpses of two lakes.

Okay, it wasn’t really all that bad.

It was definitely strenuous.

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Uphill for 1.7 miles. And then most of the next half mile as well. Muscles were aching that we didn’t know we had.

We did see some sun.

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But the first lake we went to, Pine Lake, was inaccessible because the water was still covering this “boardwalk.”

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When I read the description of the hike, I thought, “Oh, nice! A boardwalk!” I was imagining something more along the lines of this:

Boardwalk

No boardwalk on Pine Lake. And no access to the edge of Pine Lake. So we headed to Cedar Lake. We caught a glimpse:

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It was pretty. But mostly, for the entire 4 hours that we hiked, we saw trees.

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And, believe it or not, even though the sun was shining and it was a lovely 75 degree day, we were just a tad chilly inside those woods. We never even found a sunny spot to sit and eat our picnic that Ed & Sarah carried on their backs the entire way.

We hiked up to the viewpoint. I didn’t even take a picture there. Not much view, even on a sunny day. It’s a little…overgrown. It’s my ever-so-humble opinion that a hike should include some varying landscapes, or bring you to an amazing view at the end. It’s like childbirth. You can get through the pain of childbirth because you know at the end, there’s a baby. On a hike, you keep going because you want to get to the view.

Well, anyway, since it was getting dark inside those woods, we hiked back down. I should say, that despite our “look tired!” picture we took at the end of the hike, we did really well. No one whined, (well, except maybe for me a little bit in this blog post), we had fun together, and WE DID IT!

It was a pretty muddy hike, given that it doesn’t dry up much in those woods. Guess whose feet were the dirtiest?

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After the hike we ate our dinner in the van, (after using several thousand baby wipes on our feet and legs and hands), shopped at Lowe’s, and hung out at Logos with friends until the fireworks show started. We had a great view from the top of the Flatiron Building – best view in town!

It was an awesome way to spend our 4th of July afternoon and evening as a family. Would I do it again? Yes. Except on a different hike.

1 comment:

dee said...

LOVE it! That "after" picture was the best. The whole tree and not much variance in the landscape was kind of the whole reason we left the state to hike.