Lily was feeling incrementally better today and we are so excited that she is going in the right direction.
In the morning, my mom came to our back yard to get her pillow which we accidentally ended up with after the Denver trip, and she gave back things she ended up with and gave the kids a bunch of goodies including these cute bags the kids played with. She also gave us walkie talkies and bubbles that the kids have been playing with a lot.
Today I decided to get everyone out of the house after being cooped up all week. The two constraints were how to still quarantine and how to get away from the disgusting smoke that is in our air right now. I researched a very desolate trail near fish lake and hoped that would fit the bill.
After Lydia and Mary did music practice (I intended to have Ammon do his, but I didn’t get it done), and I tidied the house, we took off around 2:00.
It was so fun to go to the fishlake area, because I’ve never explored that area before. I was delighted to learn that it is just 45 minutes south of I-70. That makes I-70 officially my favorite road. Just south of I-70 are Moab, Goblin valley, and fish lake, and the San Rafael Swell is right on I-70. On the way down, I realized the drive was taking longer than I expected, so I pivoted to stop at the first totally desolate looking trailhead I could find. The first one was too desolate, as in, there was no longer a trail there. But the second one fit the bill. It was an ATV trail called sheep’s Creek.
The trail started out a bit rough because I was stressed and kids were complaining. Clarissa was the most difficult, but it turned into a giant whining fest that was very discouraging. I will say though, that by the end, everyone turned it around, and [I think] had a good time. I for one was so grateful to be in nature with my family. The air was still not the best, but better than what we had in Orem. I was also grateful to have the kids practicing hiking. I hope they get to the place of learning to love hiking inherently, even if there are bugs, or it’s not time for a water break, or their legs are tired etc. Also, we did not see a soul on the trail, which was the goal, and Basil had a ton of fun running around.
Here are some scenes from the trail:
There were a TON of cows on the trail. At one point we turned turned back on a trail because a cow was moving towards us trying to head us off from going forward [it seemed] and I thought I saw a young cow near it, and I just didn’t want to get into any complicated situations with just me and the kids. We saw a lot of cows throughout the trail. Towards the end, Basil started barking at them, and I’m not sure if he approached one or not. So the cows made things a bit tricky (even on the drive home, see below!), but they also made things very fun and interesting. I think it was Mary who commented that the name sheep’s creek made no sense, haha. It clearly should have been cows creek!
My favorite part of the whole day was eating Carl’s Jr. with the kids after the hike with them all sitting in the back of our new (used) car, Black Beauty (as they have named it). They named the last car pig-pen, probably because they really made a mess of it. In an effort to not let that happen again (so that Black Beauty never needs to be renamed pigpen#2), all the kids at in the trunk. We are trying to have no one ever eat in the car.
In the car ride home, Basil enjoyed the breeze in his hair when we opened the windows to let the flies out:
And the kids played happily with their Carl’s Jr. toys and by making faces of different emotions into the camera and taking pictures.
