At it Again...

So I've been at it again, making little movies on my home computer to share trips with others. As it got cold outside I had to revisit my Samoa photos and today, a trip to Kolob.

We love to hike and one of our favorite places to go is Kolob Canyon! Ah, so pretty, prettier than through the main entrance of Zion National Park, of which it is a part. We've hiked this particular trail several times, in the summer, winter and fall. It started as a research trip for a novel and became a favorite place.

I took lots of landscape photos the first time out ... did I ever mention I love photography? Anyway, it's a hike to the double arch alcove. Anyone been there? It's about five miles round trip, but it's not too hard. My six year old has done it twice.

There's another hike up Kolob we're thinking of taking soon, it's over 20 miles up the canyon, where you spend the night rustic style and hike back again. Of course, we'd leave the littler ones home and wait for it to warm up before we commit!

I'm always looking for great places to go hiking and visiting. What are your favorite spots to travel?

Treasure Hunting

I took the kids treasure hunting over the weekend, well geocaching. Here's how it works, you plug coordinates for a geocache into your GPS and hit the "go to" button, then you follow the directions until you find it (usually an ammo can or tupperware container filled with toys). Then you're free to trade out an item. The kids love this! They gather tons of toys from home in hopes of making a good trade on the trail.

The kids navigated ... I don't know if I can adequately explain what happened next, but rest assured that no one got hurt of hopelessly lost. We did circle one geocache several times, hike halfway up the hill and back, across the side hill and through the mud before finding it ... after we realized my daughter was reading the GPS wrong. Oops. We also took a grand hike up another very steep mountain, saw 14 deer, cut cross country, dodging cactus and sagebrush before finding another, which just happened to be right on the side of a dirt road opposite the direction my son took us. That was a fun one!

We had some great hikes and a lot of fun. My kids would say they made some great trades, too. If you're interested in geocaching, there are thousands of them all over the U.S. Check out geocaching.com and search for your zip code. I know there are hundreds within an hour's drive of us.