San Tan Hike

The last week of April was really busy for me (for reasons I'll detail in our April randoms post) so on the last Saturday we declared a family day and went for a hike in the San Tan Mountains!! We've been wanting to do this before the weather got too hot so I'm glad we finally got out and did it! We did the shortest hike they had, which was 1.3 miles, and it took us about two hours. Our girls started complaining before we were even out of sight of the trailhead, but overall they did well and it was hopefully a good warmup for more hikes in the fall. While I wouldn't call the desert "mountains" beautiful, there were some interesting sights, and it was a great way to spend a Saturday together!!

Reggy spent most of the hike riding with Dad

A crazy cactus. There were some really interesting cactus formations and we had fun imagining what they were

"Are you coming, Mom?"

She must've seen something interesting

 Madison totally convinced McKinley that the cactus could bite. We tried to convince her to touch one, but she absolutely would not. This is as close as she would go. Way to go, Madison

Madison was a little more brave

 This little cutie hiked with us in some spots!

This tree had lots of little pretty purple flowers

A view of the mountain

I was kind of fascinated by these "trees". They looked really fuzzy even from just a few feet away, like you really wanted to just go up and hug them. But up close, you could see that there were actually just thousands of prickly spines!

This funny cactus ran into a tree trunk above it and decided to grow sideways along the ground instead

Madison decided that this one looked like a chair. Funny that she wouldn't sit in it :)

More of the landscape

This is actually looking back into the valley

Of course, McKinley liked the purple flowers

These two had a lot of fun collecting rocks and other things they found on the trail. I gave them each backpacks and told them they could put whatever they wanted into their packs but they had to carry them - Mom and Dad would NOT! There were a few discussions along the way about which treasures were really important to keep because the packs were getting heavy, which I think was a good lesson for them!

Madison wanted to collect this stick that wouldn't fit in her pack so she and McKinley took turns carrying it

Another "fuzzy" one

Dad and his three cute girls!

 Someone walking down the trail volunteered to take a family picture!!

Great job Reggy!