Camping and hiking in the San Juans

 Before the rains came and cut our summer camping season a bit short, we enjoyed a lovely birthday cousins camp out at Rob and Sheila's. The kids love to run through the meadows and forests gathering wild strawberries, flowers and climbing trees.

 

 

 The views are always outstanding!

 

 

 We build traps, learn about trees and animals, and look cute with flowers in our hair. Grace is such a cutie and loves to pose for pictures and then look at them. I have a lot of pictures of her this summer. Dylan loves helping his little cousin and is so nice to her.

 

 The boys like to try and hide behind trees, under logs or under a bunch of branches and leaves so that they can spy on us or scare us. It provides hours of entertainment.

 For Sheila's birthday she wanted to hike Wilson Peak. It is one of the more difficult 14er's and she is a rock star. It is a beautiful hike and one that I may do again someday. Unfortunately we had a tight window with the weather and I found the loose rocky terrain to be very slow going, so I did not summit that day. The other three did and we all had a wonderful hike.

4th of July 2013

This truly is one of my favorite days of the year to be in Telluride. The parade, the picnic and USUALLY the fireworks. Big bummer that the fireworks were cancelled due to dry conditions, especially since the rest of the summer was rainy and cold. That's OK, we still had a fun day.

This year some of the local pilots gave us the opening fly by instead of the air force jets. These guys, known as "low and slow" pilots, were able to buzz right over our heads! Pretty impressive to fly this low in a canyon!

It is always fun to see who shows up and participates in the parade. We have a fun and creative community.

 
Uncle Trevor/Daddy took the cousins through the streets this year. No big raft with soaking water pumps this time....gotta keep the people guessing!

 

 Grace and Noah are getting so big! We all had a nice time at the park at the Fireman''s picnic. There were tons of games and bouncy house things for kids of all ages.










Colter and his buddy Finn posing for a little selfie. Notice the damaged front tooth and general ouchiness on Colter's face? He was a hero just two days before and saved his cousin Noah from a falling rock. All the cousins were climbing behind our house and Eli accidentally knocked a large rock loose. Colter was helping Noah climb up a section, saw the rock, pushed Noah out of the way and tried to deflect the boulder. We are so proud of his quick reactions and protective instinct. He took a pretty good hit, but it would have been much worse for little Noah-bear. The scabs healed and the tooth was repaired, Colter thought the mouth numbing was pretty entertaining.

ABC's in Canada

A is for airplane and adventure.

B is for boats, butterflies, brothers, bugs, buckets of fish, beavers and bald eagles.

C is for copilots, catch, cabins, concentration and confidence!

D is for docks, determination, driving and Daddy.   

E is for exploring, evergreens, entertainment and endless energy.

F is for Flin Flon, frogs, fillet lessons, fire and FUN!.

G is for Golden Lake, geese, gratitude and goofing off.

H is for hugs, hiking, helicopters and happy, happy, happy!

I is for ice, inventions and ice house..

J is for Jones Lake and joking around.

K is for knots and kissing the little ones before throwing them back.

 L is for lakes, laughing, LaBordes and leeches....ew.

M is for mess of fish, multigenerational monster truck mash up and mossy mattresses.

N is for northern pike (Dylan caught the biggest one) and northern lights (that eluded us this time).

O is for outside and outhouse.

P is for persistence, perch, patience, peaceful and potatoes.

Q is for quiet, 

R is for rafts, rain, relaxation and reflection.

S is for stringers of fish, sunsets, SUP, solar oven, and swimming, yes, swimming!

T is for tall trees, teamwork, tangled lines and twisting fish.

 

U is for Uncle Bill, UNO and unique experiences.

V is for vines and views

W is for waiting, walleye and worms.

and X, Y, Z......now we blogged our A, B, C's won't you scroll more pictures with me.

 

What a great adventure! Lots of travelling, exploring, fishing, laughing and eating!
We had a blast. Here are a bunch more pics of our week in the great north.