Rock Climbing with Dan

On Mother's day Dan and I hiked Enchanted Rock. Mom and the boys stayed back at the camp, the granite trail from the day before was just too much for AJ & Reese's paws. The hike itself was a little more than one mile, but in that mile hike climbs 425ft in elevation which is pretty darned steep!

Dan and I took photos at the trail-head before taking off on our hike. I started off with the wide-brimmed had to shade the back of my neck, as I got a little too much sun on Saturday, but the wind kept stealing it so I had to give in and stuff it in Dan's backpack.

Here we are at the summit.

"WOO-HOO!"

With as tired as my legs were from the four mile hike the day before, I felt quite the accomplishment for summitting Enchanted Rock. After climbing 425ft in elevation, in a very short time, I revised my earlier thoughts on what tired legs feel like.

Dan ran ahead to check out some HUGE boulders. Dan looks absolutely tiny standing in front of them. You can't really see but a little kid ran into the shot and sat down at the edge of the rock.

Then Dan and I tried our hand at "bouldering". Man-o-man my hands hurt after scrambling up those rocks. I almost lost my grip a few times but was able to regain my finger hold.

Dan was quite adept at grabbing onto the granite chunks. All this and no lessons! Ah, well we had fun pretending to rock-climb...it's probably a good idea we were never more than two feet off the ground!

Surprisingly there was quite a bit of shade on top of Enchanted Rock. It's amazing to me to see how adaptive life is. Flowers, grasses, cactus, and trees clung on to every grain of soil and every drop of water on the solid surface of the Rock.

I really enjoyed our day on Enchanted Rock. Everything was so beautiful and the weather was oh so cooperative. On Saturday night, around 3am, many of the campers packed up and left because the wind picked up and sounded really scary even though it never rained. I actually got out of the sleeping bag to put away everything that we had left out on the table earlier in the evening. Of course that was after I laid there, wide-eyed, staring at the ceiling of the tent wondering if things were going to get rough and rainy or if the bad weather would quickly blow though. AJ was nervous because of the bad weather and burrowed in with me. He actually curled up under the blankets with me. He is such a snuggler!

I'm still not sure how I photographed this pretty little bird. She had been on a tree much further away but by the time I got my focus she took off. Next thing I knew she was in the tree above me and she sang a few notes while I snapped the photo and promptly flew off! I was so excited that I caught her!

It's a good thing Dan was along. He used his super-human strength to hold two massive boulders up. I am married to the strongest man in the universe!