I Wish I Brought a Camera

Today was the first field trip of summer vacation. (We do 2 field trips a week every week of the summer.) So today, I took them to Cottonwood Canyon to a kid friendly hike to see the Doughnut Falls. When we got there, the road was blocked off. We parked on the road, set up our picnic by the rushing river and talked about what to do. We decided we would hike the mile up to the trail head since we were there anyway, even though Rachel did not wear shoes. (Do I really have to inspect every kid every time we leave the house????) So we ate in the sun by the river in the beautiful mountains, put the food back into the car and began the walk. This was just like hiking in the mountains, expcept that the trail is paved. As we hiked further up, the road/paved trail began to be more and more snowy-- not good for Rachel so I let her ride on my shoulders. After some banks of trodden down snow we left the pavement and made it into this beautiful fairy land. With a very twisting river and a lot of rocks and logs to hop along with a few small water falls. Still we pressed forward to the trail head. We really wanted to play at the falls. We went up about 20 feet at which point the snow deepened to about a foot and a half. The little kids fell every minute or two, and I knew there was no way we could make it to the falls. We walked back down to the fairy land and the kids played. They ran through the river, explored the woods, tossed rocks into the river, collected rocks, took some clothes off to get wet, threw snow balls. And oh, how I regretted not bringing a camera!!!