Pastey-White, Out Of Shape Parents Go For A Hike

Decided to dust off the ol' blog. I need a way to keep my Mom, brother in Korea and siblings not on Facebook updated. Here goes! My husband is an "all or nothing" kind of guy. Anything he does is to the extreme. This weekends' adventure was no different.

One of our favorite activities is hiking. Due to Aaron's insane work schedule, we rarely get to go. We decided to get out the kid packs and head on out for an early Saturday hike. I gave Aaron full control of planning the actual hike. (I should know better by now...).

We headed to Carbon Canyon to do some hiking in local Chino Hills. Aaron had planned us a hike that was all uphill one way and all downhill coming back. A great idea for two pastey-white, out of shape parents to take on...right? Well yes, if the hike hadn't been a 1000 ft. ascent, 9 mile round trip with 2 kids in packs that weigh about 50 lbs each.

We started at 8:30 am and had a great time pointing out stink bugs, ants, rabits and lots and lots of coyote and horse poop.

We stopped along the way for a snack. Ev was quite obsessed with the map and letting us know which direction to go. He insisted on holding the map and charting our next leg of the journey. Natalie was quite happy to chase lizards and freak her mom out by getting dangerously close to any pile of coyote poop she could find. For at least half of the trip she passed out asleep in the pack (notice her arm and head flopped over to the side). Ev was a trooper. He had fun throwing rocks, and we had fun showing him snake trails, listening for woodpeckers, seeing rabbits and a coyote. We stopped for a Gatorade break at the peak. We finished our hike at about 3pm. The kids passed out in the truck on the way home, and Aaron and I were so tired and sore we just parked in the driveway and idled with the air on for about an hour. The neighbors must have thought we were nuts. Although my feet felt like they were on fire, and Aaron and I both ended up with multiple blisters on the bottoms of our feet, we loved the adventure. Aaron is all excited to go again this weekend. I'll give him an answer after my blisters heal and I can walk normally again.