Okay, so even with Sport crapping his pants twice and Buddy having a massive bloody nose courtesy of his brother, we had a FANTASTIC time! Seriously, even with that first part I could not have asked for our first backpacking trip to go any better than it did. I'm sure somewhere down the road we are going to pay for it but these boys were amazing this weekend.

We started out pretty late in the day on Saturday hoping the boys would nap in the car. Sport slept for about a half hour on the drive but Buddy didn't at all. No nap is never a good thing for boys and parents alike and usually involves a whining fest later in the day but it never happened. We parked the car, got all geared up and started on our way about 1:30pm. Near the car we were lucky enough to see some Anasazi rock art of big horn sheep. Jay has a freakish way of spotting things like this and finding shards of ancient pottery along the trail.

Here are all my boys starting out. The trail takes us over the top of the sandstone in this picture.



During the hike we figured on taking a break every half hour or so to give the boys snacks and drinks and just make sure that we had plenty of time to get there. We also stopped to watch the lizards and listen to the birds or look for chipmunks. It took a bit over two hours to get to our campsite which is way less time than I thought it was going to take. We figure the hike was about one and a half or two miles but the hills we climbed where very high for little legs. They probably could have done twice the distance on flat ground.

Here is one of the breaks we took so the boys could see how far up they had climbed. There is about a 20 foot drop from this outcropping and Jay was standing just out of the picture close to them so I didn't have a heart attack.



We found a great campsite and the boys 'helped' us set up the tent and the gear. We walked around to see what cool things we could find. All around the valley we were in there were cocoons of a sort full of caterpillars. I had to google it when we got home and found out they were Tent Caterpillars. I'd never heard of them before. Of course the boys were very excited by it all.



For some reason Buddy and Sport loved this area of sandstone and played chase for the longest time all over it. This is also what they did the whole time Jay and I were packing up camp the next morning. Where do they get the energy?




Sometime after this we started to figure out that Sport must have had some type of stomach bug going on. He didn't seem to mind but he also couldn't quite tell the difference when it's okay to fart and when you should get your pants down. He was very surprised to find he had a load in his pants and couldn't understand how it got there. Keeping in mind that we were camping, it's not easy to clean up when you're at home, and the limited supplies we brought, it was really pretty funny. Not quite as funny when he did it the next day, but we managed. Here he is after the first time and clearly not bothered by having no pants on. He would have happily played the rest of the day half naked but we opted for pants.



He is going to be so mad at me someday, tee hee. Oh, and that isn't a knife he is running with, I'm not that bad of a parent.

The rest of the evening was pretty uneventful except for whatever transpired that gave Buddy a bloody nose. I'm happy to report that he didn't get any blood on any of the new camping equipment. Oh, and he was fine after a minute or two.

The next morning we had breakfast, packed up, and headed back to the car. The boys did better after a nights rest than they did on the way in. Sport hiked like he had somewhere important to be and couldn't be late. They only wanted one break on the way back and even that didn't last for long. You can get a bit of an idea of the hike from this picture. The trail takes us over this set of hills just where the gray side of the mountain on the right touches the more peach colored sandstone.



Here is Buddy and I a little farther along the trail.



And of course what fun would it be if I couldn't embarrass both my boys in one post.



One day they will be bigger than me and I might regret this, but I doubt it.

After all this we all slept really great last night and I'm already looking forward to the next trip. Where I'm pretty sure there will be some payback from the universe for how well this trip went.