Kruger Rock Trail and Estes Park

We went on another hike this week with Lexi and Cedar (and their puppy Lola). Everything started out a little rocky because soon after we parked, but hadn't gotten out of the car yet, Natalie threw up from car sickness. It took us about half an hour to get that all cleaned up and to get sunscreen on everyone and snacks all taken care of. Lexi still hadn't arrived by then, so we waited around a little longer, then figured that maybe we had misunderstood where to meet (I didn't have any service to my phone, so we couldn't call). We stared out on the hike alone and the kids, especially Heidi, were kind of grumpy about it.

We hiked about a quarter of the way up and stopped to rest in the shade for awhile. While we were sitting there, Leif suddenly yelled out that he saw Lola, then that he could see Lexi, so all the kids went running back down the trail to meet them.

Everyone was quite a bit more cheerful after that and it was a beautiful hike.

Trevor spied out a ton of good picture spots and wanted me to take a photo of him there.

Leif got all worn out just before we got to the top of the trail and didn't want to go on. I had to convince him that he was almost there and let him have a good rest before he was able to keep going.

All the kids were very excited about the rocks to climb once they got up to the top.

Lexi gave Asher his birthday present and we had water and snacks at the top, trying to stay in the shade to keep cool.

Leif was eager to get back down and left ahead of the rest of us. Asher soon caught up to him and passed him with Torben, and they were all waiting for the rest of us at the bottom.

Since we were right next to Estes Park, I wanted to take the kids there at least to see it, especially since the younger kids have never been.

There were tons of daring chipmunks who ran up and begged for food, so the kids had fun feeding them goldfish. You could easily tell which chipmunks were the boldest because they were the fattest.

We stopped by the lake, but we didn't stay long because I didn't want to pay for another parking pass.

We went into the town and walked around just a little bit- enough to get some lunch and have a short picnic. Just before we parked, we saw an elk walking down the street- which is a pretty common occurrence in Estes. We also saw lots of elk droppings, which Torben insisted on rolling in, so we had to clean him up with baby wiped before he was allowed in the car and he had to have a bath when we got home.