Hike {Devil’s canyon}

I found out Bethany needs 12 more driving hours, so she got 5 of them today. We started out early to drive to Pueblo Mt. park to hike Devil’s canyon. Despite the name, it’s not in Pueblo, it’s in Beulah. We made it there no problem and gathered our stuff for the hike.

I didn’t see that some sunscreened finger had touched my camera lens, so most of my pics from the camera seem blurry to me (because it couldn’t focus correctly.) Still, I got some shots as we hiked along a pine covered trail.

We crossed a creek a few times, went down, back up, passed by a tipi then came to the canyon.

The girls thought it looked like Jurassic park, so no, Hannah’s not dead tired – she’s playing dead after being attacked by a dinosaur (Bethany.)

The girls climbed up the rocks and we sat and had our snack.

They didn’t want to go around on the trail and over to the other trail – my mistake, next time I will make them go on the Mace trail and then intersect the Devil’s canyon trail.

(We hiked the same distance by turning around because its a loop, but I wanted to see the other trail.)

It was pretty hot, so I think even with shade this hike is more of a Fall one than a Summer one. For lunch we stopped in town and ate at Stompin’ Grounds cafe.

It was very eclectic in decorations.

There was a sign that said, ‘No wi-fi, talk to each other.’

The owner had games in an old fridge, so we played: tic-tac-toe, doll dress-up, pick up sticks and a block word game.

The food is home cooked, the salads looked really good, but I had a whole wheat quesadilla with olives and pine nuts in it. Grace and Bethany split a French bread pizza, 1/2 with pine nuts and 1/2 with pine nuts and artichoke hearts. Hannah had a breakfast burrito and didn’t like the eggs in it (I tasted them, they were fine to me.) If you go hike around the mountain, drop on in here for a sandwich or just a cold shake; she has a lot of flavors, but the best was the chai.

We drove over the mountain to get to Bishop’s castle (only 7 miles away, but 30 minutes since it was a dirt road connecting to the highway.)

Can’t get that close to the castle and not stop….Mr. Bishop hasn’t added anything new since our last visit, so we just climbed around.

There’s Bethany in the globe.

Hannah went out on the bridge to nowhere, but Grace stayed in the globe.

A storm was coming over the ridge and the castle is basically a huge lightning rod (it is mostly metal..) so we got down and headed back to the car.

Bethany drove home and did a good job going 75 when the limit was that high.

We checked the mail at home and there was a 29 page letter from Joel (front and back of paper, so 14 pages and of those about 10 were small papers, the rest were regular sized notebook paper.) Apparently when they are at the firing range they sit in the bleachers unless it is their turn to shoot, so he had a lot of down time. He said that if they get more than 3 letters they have to do 10 push-ups per letter – he did 100. Maybe writing everyday isn’t such a good idea. He said please write though, the only thing he gets to read is the Army manual and our letters. Some highlights: He likes eating the vegetarian MRE’s because they have better snacks/dessert in them. As he was opening one to eat he wrote, ‘Woot, got cherry cobbler!’ He got issued an M-16 and has taken it apart, put it back together and crawled around with it. They did a march with full gear and some people got dehydrated and were going crazy. When they had to crawl through the obstacle course with their head down they were crawling through a field of tarantulas, apparently they are just there and they run across the course. He said that he might get to skip through some AIT since he was working as an EMT and doesn’t need some of the training, which is good because he was going to add 2 weeks of jump school to AIT. It’s hot. There is a person in his squad who was a chiropractor and they adjusted his back (probably hurt something on a march or crawl.) He’s got the PT test in the bag as of now. He wants us to send him Halls cough drops, not sure why (I think they trade them for things, though I know you can buy them at the PX.) He’s looking forward to another Sunday phone call, I think those will be regualr now. I don’t think he got my drawing yet, but I already have the next one planned out.

Tomorrow is birthday lunch and pics with Grace and outdoor movie night – Raiders of the Lost Ark.