Mother's Day Annual Hike

Today was our 3rd Annual (if I'm remembering correctly) Mother's Day hike!  It's something I look forward to every Mom's Day and today was the best one yet!  We decided to hike another new trail and this one was a great one.  It was the Illinois Trail which was down in a valley, but with wide open spaces.  No stairs to climb up or down.  No treacherous drop-off.  Just wide valleys in the canyon with lots of creeks to wade across.  Absolutely LOVED it!

Shortly after our trek began, I took this picture of my girls.  Aren't they the best?!

You can kind of see from this picture how open the trails were.  We've never been on trails this wide before.  Really made exploring a lot more fun!

There was a creek that ran beside us for quite a ways before we had to cross.  So early on we just threw a few rocks in and admired the little stream.  We had no idea we'd be marching right through it 5-6 times!

Of course, any big rock and my kids have to tackle it.  They found a slug on this one.  Bonus!

Me with my FOUR wonderful kids! ;-)

We came across these tracks in the mud (it was very muddy today!).  We decided they were bear footprints.  They sound more exciting than "big dog" tracks.

This was the first creek area we had to cross.  It was shallow enough that we basically just walked over the rocks.  Made it fun.  Isn't it beautiful though?  Love how the sunlight was peaking through here.

We all had on our water shoes, so we just went any where we wanted.  Pete was a little more inventive in finding his water-free way across.

The water was REALLY cold as you can tell from Livie's expression. ;-)  We crossed the creek back and forth several times, because it wound all around that canyon.

This was the source of the water.  SOOO wished we could've walked up to that passageway, but the water was really deep there. 

My three trekkers were doing a great job of exploring today!

When we got to the end of trail where the water was coming down, we were alone here for a good 20-30 min.  We let Tater off his leash like we did last time we went hiking and he loved every minute of it.  He found every stick he could and would have us throw it.  With so much open area and freedom to run, he went crazy and enjoyed every single minute of it.  The kids played in the water and decided to skip rocks with Pete.  It was such a fun, relaxing time in this beautiful place.

When more people started coming, we hooked Tater back up and headed back.  We took a couple of the trails up to the side of the canyons as well as down to some of the creek beds we missed the first time around.  We were so muddy and wet, we were a little braver about getting down in there than we were on the way in.  We even bought a portable dog bowl for Tater, so he could drink a little easier than trying to lick up water pouring out of a water bottle.  I still would love to get him a backpack.  They only had pink when we were at the pet shop yesterday, but I know he'd do a great job carrying some of our snacks and stuff on his back.  Anyway, today was a great day.  Absolutely PERFECT weather and a great way to spend the day with my fantastic family!  Happy Mother's Day to my mom and my mom-in-law and all my sisters - Em, Cara, Jill, and Francy.  Hope your day was blessed too!