Tree Huggin' Good Time

Well to kick off the start of my third trimester, John took me camping! Santa brought him some new backpacking equipment last Christmas and he's been chompin' at the bit to use it! So he came home from a week at the DMO's(?) and packed up the car and off we were. Our friend, Notch came with and we ended up staying Friday night at his extended families house up in Pine, AZ. We went up and met them just after last Thanksgiving with Notch and his family and their house is extremely unique and fun to visit! So after staying the night with them, and getting the royal treatment in the morning with a wonderful breakfast, we left to hit the trails. We found the small access road we were hunting for, after a couple of drive-bys and parked 3/4 mile in the windy, dirt road. We hiked down hill for 45 mins and crossed a river at the bottom.
Once we crossed the river, the place begged to be our camp site for the night! So we dropped our backpacks (I just had a small book bag and my adoring husband had to pick up my slack and carried most of my things in... but it enabled him to fully understand the capacity of his new backpack so really I did him a favor!) and the boys immediately grabbed their fly fishing rods and searched for a spot to reel 'em in. I took the opportunity to mull around the area, did a little nature Yoga, read a little, wrote in my journal and just soaked in God's glorious masterpiece! After a bit, the boys came back to camp, which I decided I'd start setting up our tent, and after everything was set up we all went on a little "Canyoneering" hike down the river. Canyoneering is, in my experience hiking at the bottom of a canyon where at times it's too difficult to hike along the shore line, or there is no shore line so you've got to swim parts of the hike in the near freezing water. The temperature was in the 80's during the day and dropped down to the 40's at night. It was almost 5pm, the hot sun was cooling down and we got to a point in the hike where we'd have to swim 100 yards to continue. I, for one decided that I was done for the day and was ready to return back to camp and dry off. The boys agreed, but not after a little adventurous climbing to check out a log crossing the rock walls. We returned back to the camp site, the boys did one more fishing voyage then came back to start dinner. Because of the extreme fire warnings, we resisted the urge of making a huge camp fire and did most of our cooking on a little camp stove. But to roast the marshmallows for the smores, we had to build a tiny fire! They used probably 10 gallons on water to put the fire out and it looked more like a fish bowl than a fire pit by the time they were done with it. We called it a night and, exhausted, we all turned in. The next morning after breakfast we wandered for one more fly fishing expo, returned, packed up and headed home! I kept my handy dandy heart rate monitor on to ensure that I wasn't over exerting myself. We all had a good time and hope to go back to that spot when the temperature is even warmer so the swimming isn't so chilly.