The Dirty Mountains

The weather has been so beautiful here lately that we've been trying to take the kids out as much as possible.  We've gone to a bunch of different parks, took the kids on a bike ride along the Jordan River Trail, and went on our first legit hike together as a family.  The hike happened after Taz informed us one morning that she wanted to go to the dirty mountains.  Well when you get a request like that, how do you turn it down.  So we did a bit of research and decided to take the kids to Cecret Lake.  Its about a 1 mile hike (up a pretty steep incline) to this lake hidden in the mountains.  Taz was amazing and walked/ran the whole way.  She was amazed at how high we were and that she could see down into the valley.

On the way up we saw a little chipmunk in a tree.  We left a couple of nuts for it on the way up.  Then we saw the coolest hairy caterpillar which we obviously had to stop and play with.  And who would have thought, that picking up hands full of gravel and chucking it would be such a treat.  Once we reached the lake, we sat and ate some snacks.  There were two little chipmunks that kept coming around, so we threw a few nuts out for them.  The girls loved watching them grab the nuts and run away with them.  The highlight however was when one of the cheeky chipmunks climbed right into the backpack looking for another nut.  Taz squealed and talked about it the whole trip down the mountain.  I wish I was able to get a photo of it, but alas the camera was in the bag.  On the way down, we saw a moose off in the trees (Moose scare the crap out of me), and we checked to see if the first chipmunk had eaten the nuts we had left.

It was great for all of us to get a little exercise, breathe some fresh (polluted) air and commune with nature.

 Hairy caterpillar

 Getting muddy