Climbers Trail to Tahquitz

Abby chose today's hike. Initially I was thinking about hiking to Suicide and back, which is about 7-miles roundtrip. She's done that one before and I guess she kinda remembers it to be long (although it's been 2 yrs) so she says, "Let's do the climbers trail to Tahquitz.

Little did she know it'd be really steep. Not a long trail but very strenuous. We ended up taking a break every five minutes.

When they got a glimpse of the rock they're tired seemed to go away and they had fun playing around on it.

Grotto

Here's a place that we've never been, even though we've lived here for five years now. It's not that it's far, it's right next to the local art high school. I found this place by reading a friends Facebook post. I was happy to learn of a place with small pools we can dip in when it's hot. However, when we went the creek had run dry and there were just some small pools here and there.
Kids were stoked to find some tadpoles and pollywoggies.

It's a very beautiful place, I guess it's the local party place. We'll have to come back early summer next year to enjoy it.

Camping - Site #6

It's been so warm lately, even where we live at 6000'. So we went on a spur-of-the-moment camping trip up Black Mtn. It's so nice to have such great camping only 30 minutes away. This time we landed on site #6, a new one for us. The site was adjacent to a trailhead so during the day there were cars around us which wasn't so bad except when a car alarm went off at 6am.

Played horseshoes again.

David made some bacon wrapped hotdogs which was a hit. Yes, bacon makes everything better. ^_^

Brendan and Mary joined us again.

Brendan roasted some jalapenos and Sage got brave and tried one.

Summer Hiking

The weather's been pretty warm for hiking but the Ernie Maxwell Trail is a good one to hike because about half of it is shady. It's not too steep and the 5-miles round-trip is not too long for the kids.

A little rock climbing.

A pleasant surprise...water! The water was pretty cold, it felt really good.

They had fun flowing down their caps which made it nice and cold for the hike back. ^_^

Branching Out (a little...)

I tried printing on some printed fabric. I think these might work as wall hangings.

New Food Blog

After some long thought I've decided to create a separate food blog. So all you foodies follow me over on Mother Bliss Munchies !

Stella Octangula

Emi origamied this 24 faced polyhedron compound composed of two tetrahedrons called a Stella Octangula. She used 24 pieces of paper and pieced it all together. A wireframe version of the stella octangula is sometimes known as the merkaba and imbued with mystic properties.

Yellow Post #2

This year, the kids decided they wanted to go camping instead of going to a concert & fireworks for the July 4th celebration. So we headed up Black Mountain again, this time to yellow post site #2. We got a set of horseshoes which was a hit.

Every camping trip the kids carve their own marshmallow sticks.

We got these marshmallows that were GIGANTIC. Sage ate just one and was finished. I guess bigger is not always better.

They like to totally burn their marshmallows, I don't understand why.

David offered $10 to whoever caught a lizard. So Abby put a piece of lettuce inside a box and patiently waited for one to walk into her trap (no such luck, of course.)

Some camera trick photography...^_^