I'm SOOO glad it's over!

What better way to spend a Sabbath afternoon than a walk with some little Pathfinders in God's wilderness, right?

WRONG!!!

I spent yesterday in what is sure to be my most terrifying outdoors experience yet. Admittedly, I don't really enjoy the outdoors and wouldn't see much reason to leave my house for entertainment purposes if it weren't for the people who live with me. I try to push past this little quirk of mine and attempt to appear as though I am enjoying myself on these little jaunts. Some days I manage to do quite fine. Yesterdays experience however, was beyond my coping abilities. It actually gave that infamous camping canoe trip of long ago a run for it's money in awfulness! I have yet to be able to explain exactly WHY we would take our children to rocky terrain with narrow pathways and steep cliffs (Jeremy says hills... I think he's nuts!) I maintained a death grip on Amelia's arm because she's the one most likely to hurl herself over the edge just for fun. Marshall,(the one who is the one most likely to trip and fall down a cliff) is terrified of stairs where the vertical portion is missing and balconies with iron railings. Well, wouldn't you know he was just having a rip roaring great time... leaving me to wonder into what sort of alternate universe we had slipped into! I spent the majority of the time fighting back waves of nausea and a little of it trying to hide the tears slipping out from under my sunglasses. Just the sight of nothing but sky behind people, let alone the people I am most attached to is enough to send me to the looney bin. About half way through my visions of dying rocky deaths and that movie Cliffhanger, I realized that great big poisonous snakes probably lived there and wouldn't exactly love to see us either. By the time we got back in our car, I had a headache and just wanted to slip into bed. Jeremy will have to tell you all about taking our MINIVAN into an area that should only be traveled by 4WD vehicles. I'll just leave you with this lovely little photo of a tunnel that we had to travel through. It was so narrow that we could put the windows down and touch the wall on both sides.


At least I got some nice pictures, right? That's what I kept telling myself. It kept away the hateful feelings towards a state that obviously needs some East Coast lessons on how beautiful guardrails can really be.

Someone, please, just take me back to NC and it's tree frogs.

This is a view of the wider portion of the path. See it winding it's way back into the hills?

This is what I can only hope is an uninhabited cave in the side of a steep wall that children were climbing into...

Pretty little flowers that were growing on the ground. I was able to make Amelia think that picking these was fun for a bit.

This may have been where the tears started...

Blech!!! Right, Lorry?

Amelia and her buddy Peyton

Marshall and Amelia in front of some desert foliage.

At this point, I'm getting happier... see everyone heading for their cars? Time to get a quick picture of Abby with her pretty flowers!

And... we're done!