Surprise Vacation, Day Two

After our exciting day, most of us slept well. Actually, everyone except me. LOL

So when we all woke up, we ate breakfast and unpacked. The night before Mom had promised the boys that she would teach them to play pool, since there was a pool table in the cabin. So Mom and the boys did that, and the girls and I unpacked more stuff, and cleaned the kitchen from breakfast.

When we were done with all that, we headed out to go see the Natural Bridge. When we got there, we saw that the chair lift did not open till 10:00, and it was only 9:00.

Since we had an hour on our hands, we decided that we were just going to play in the parking lot (Mom even thought to ask Ms. Gretchen to get balls and outside play stuff). But as we were parking, Mom saw a sign about black bears. When we drove over to read it (we didn’t walk b/c it was still chilly out), we noticed that there was a trailhead right there.

Mom decided that we were going to do the trail instead of playing in the parking lot, because the sign said it was only a 3/4 mile trail.

Along the way there were a lot of “step-rocks” as Jade calls them. Indigo especially liked the ones that had “pixie dust” on them (they were sparkling). The little girls loved the step-rocks!

There were lots of opportunities to have photo shoots. Actually, there were a lot of good places for photos, but finding the boys, who always ran ahead, was not so easy.

Then we came to the crossroads. We could turn around and go back to the chair lift, or we could walk another mile to the natural bridge.

We walked.

All of the boys had run ahead, and were exploring several nooks and crannies. You know, carefully checking for poison ivy, barging in to “make sure there were no bears around”. The one problem was, that after climbing up off the trail, they had to get down.

Emery slipped.

He ended up sliding down on his butt, through the mud, getting his pants very muddy, giving himself a wedgie, and making all of us laugh our heads off.

Then Indi and Jade wanted to take a picture with Mom and Dad in the “cave”. So I took one for them.

And then Jade saw this really cool looking swirly rock. She wanted a picture with that too!

And then we saw the natural bridge. It was huge!! If you look closely, up at the top, you can see Colter and Emery’s heads.

We let Dad have a moment to just soak up the beauty that was all around him. Then we took the opportunity to get a couple of good shots of Mom and Dad.

Dad wanted to get in a back shot. Good advertising he said.

Then Indi and Jade wanted portrait shots too! Indigo gave me a nice sweet face.

And then Jade came with typical Jade face.

I think it is pretty cute!

All of the boys decided to pass the time while Mom and Dad were still on the bridge by having a huge Numbers Game tournament. (Thanks a lot, Trevor and Emily!)