Day four with my parents was pioneer day so I will not write about that again so this will be about day five. Day five was my favorite day but also the hardest. It was also one of the spots on my adventure book and the reason I started doing the adventures in the first place so now I have three. I saw the pictures of the cave and wanted to hike to them so I thought it would be a fun thing to do with my parents. To get to them you have to go up American Fork Canyon and they are only opened from mid May-October. It is a mile and a half hike up on a steep but paved path. No strollers are allowed and if I had known this before the morning of I might have found a sitter for the kids. Also we didn't know that you can call ahead to purchase your tickets so you can know when your tour is and show up in time to hike up and not have to waste three hours like we did. To waste the time we drove part of the Alpine Loop and then turned off to go to Cascade Springs. It is really pretty with lots of little water falls and ponds. The picture below is of my parents there.
The pictures above are of us all starting the hike up. On the ground there are these little gold circles the count backward from 80 something to zero at the top. My mom had Grace all excited about finding all of the circles, unfortunately that didn't last to long and Grace realized that we were going to be hiking a long time. She had also fallen at Cascade Springs and skinned up her knee really bad and had not gotten over that yet.
Grace is starting to tire out and think that maybe we are only a quarter of the way up at this point. The kids did think that the little tunnel across the path was pretty cool.
Periodically along the way there are benches to sit on and little Grace had to rest her legs at every one. Blake decided to pretend to nap. I am glad we gave our selves extra time because at this point I wasn't sure we were going to make it at all. They say to give yourself an hour and a half. We started up with two ours til tour time. The bottom picture is of me and with view of the mouth of American Fork Canyon. It pretty high up at this point and this is about half way. Also the drop off on one side all the way up is like 300 feet or something so Blake had to ride on Cameron's shoulders and was only let down at benches for fear he would jump. Grace was upset she had to walk and Blake got to ride so...
my dad gave her a lift for a little while. It wasn't as long as she would have liked and for the most part she walked all the way up and down. She did a lot of crying but she keep walking and we were all very proud of her.
This is a picture of all of us at the top waiting for our tour since we did make it with a little time to spare.
This is inside the cave. We didn't think about how cold it would be in the cave but after all that hiking 45 degrees kind of felt nice. The kids we good til right at the end and then they both complained a little about being cold. Oh well they forgot about that real quick when we started the down trip. The picture of the right is of the heart of the cave. It has a red light behind it so it looks more like a heart but my flash drowned it out.
The down hike was pretty easy and Grace did a little better and we didn't have to sit at every bench just every other. Cameron with his long legs left us behind pretty quick and he said about half way down he felt Blake's head bobbing. He pulled him off of his shoulders and he was asleep so he had to carry him down in his arms. Riding on shoulders all day wore him right out. Or maybe it was because he was up till 2:30 in the morning the night before with teeth pain. After we got down we went to lunch at the deli at Thanksgiving Point since it is right out of the canyon. Then we all went home and napped. That night Cameron and I got a much needed night out without the kids while my sweet parents watched them for us. We went and saw the Dark Knight. It was a good movie to pick after such a long day because there was no way I could sleep through that.
Periodically along the way there are benches to sit on and little Grace had to rest her legs at every one. Blake decided to pretend to nap. I am glad we gave our selves extra time because at this point I wasn't sure we were going to make it at all. They say to give yourself an hour and a half. We started up with two ours til tour time. The bottom picture is of me and with view of the mouth of American Fork Canyon. It pretty high up at this point and this is about half way. Also the drop off on one side all the way up is like 300 feet or something so Blake had to ride on Cameron's shoulders and was only let down at benches for fear he would jump. Grace was upset she had to walk and Blake got to ride so...
my dad gave her a lift for a little while. It wasn't as long as she would have liked and for the most part she walked all the way up and down. She did a lot of crying but she keep walking and we were all very proud of her.
This is a picture of all of us at the top waiting for our tour since we did make it with a little time to spare.
This is inside the cave. We didn't think about how cold it would be in the cave but after all that hiking 45 degrees kind of felt nice. The kids we good til right at the end and then they both complained a little about being cold. Oh well they forgot about that real quick when we started the down trip. The picture of the right is of the heart of the cave. It has a red light behind it so it looks more like a heart but my flash drowned it out.
The down hike was pretty easy and Grace did a little better and we didn't have to sit at every bench just every other. Cameron with his long legs left us behind pretty quick and he said about half way down he felt Blake's head bobbing. He pulled him off of his shoulders and he was asleep so he had to carry him down in his arms. Riding on shoulders all day wore him right out. Or maybe it was because he was up till 2:30 in the morning the night before with teeth pain. After we got down we went to lunch at the deli at Thanksgiving Point since it is right out of the canyon. Then we all went home and napped. That night Cameron and I got a much needed night out without the kids while my sweet parents watched them for us. We went and saw the Dark Knight. It was a good movie to pick after such a long day because there was no way I could sleep through that.
2 comments:
This hike was one of the very first things I did when I went out there for my first year of college. I thought I was going to die! I wasn't use to the high altitude. I had a hard time breathing. It was such an adventure though and I really did enjoyed it other than not breathing! Those were great pictures of your family. So glad yall had such a good visit.
Holy Cow. Props to you and Cam chica. I can't believe you did that with your kids. There should be a prize for that for sure. I can't believe Blake's hair is so blonde. Love the picture of Grace inside the cave.
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