City of Rocks

A little hike with lots of fun rock cavities to hide in

Aunt Polly giving them a small rock climbing lesson.

Home, Home on the range!  Some cool wagons at the visitor's center.

I love this series of shots with Adrian putting his whole body into getting the pump to work and then running around to see if the water was coming out.

The boys under the arch

The family under the arch.  Esther's hiding on my back.

Here's a "hole shot" I have to have a picture of myself in a hole when we go somewhere with rock formations like this!

Mommy and Esther under the arch.  Her eyes are so beautiful!!

Elliot waking up from his nap to have a nice cool Pepsi.  He's still a little groggy.

We drove down to City of Rocks, ID and met up with Aunt Polly and Uncle Eric.  It was quite a challenge finding a spot to put our tent down in the BLM land with Cacti and sage brush all over the place.  Apparently, it is a VERY popular place to go camping and NO sites were available in the organized camping space.  We arrived around 11am on Saturday and tried to find my family's campsite, but were unsuccessful. So, we headed over to an arch hike and took a nap in the shade.  Then we took another hike that was supposed to be downhill....it wasn't.  We made it about 1/2 mile in an hour.  The kids all pooped out, so Darin carried Esther and Adrian while I carried Elliot.  Boy, that was a workout!  When we got back to the car, we heard Uncle Eric yell, "Hey, Miranda!"  They were climbing on the rocks right by our car!  So, we hooked up with them and went back to camp with Polly.  She really whipped the camp into shape, making a fire, roasting the kids' hotdogs and sitting them all down and feeding them while we set up the tent.  Thank you, Polly!!  Elliot was so keyed up he couldn't fall asleep till 10:45 then he wouldn't sleep in his sleeping bag, so he got cold all night and kept waking up.  When he woke up, he would cry and then wake up Esther.  Darin and I got about 3 hours of sleep.  We were so wasted on the way home!  It took about 4 hours of interstate driving to get there, and Darin was really nodding off all the way home.  I sure couldn't have done it!  The A/C wasn't working in the van and it was 93 degrees too!!  wow, what a trip.  It was a lot of fun to see Aunt Polly and Uncle Eric though and see what they can do on the rocks!