Harwood Family Backpacking Trip

Well it definitely started out a little questionable, but ended on a good note. Three days before we were planning to leave on our trip all the boys had dentist appointments. We were walking up to the big heavy doors and Tayson was the first to get there. He was attempting to open the door when Rylan ran up to "help". The door came open right on to Tayson's big toe. . . with sandals on. I'll pause while you stop cringing and open your eyes again. . . . . . . . . . Yep. Lifted the whole toenail off. It was all still attached at the bottom, but there was lots of blood and screaming. Oh yes, and did I mention that this was the first time at this particular dentist's office? They couldn't take any of the boys back for appointments until the paperwork was filled out. Not fun!

Anyway, back to the trip. We thought we would have to cancel, but decided to go at the last minute. We bandaged up Tayson's toe and figured we would probably have had to carry him a good chunk of the way anyway. So we loaded up all our packs (like a week ahead of time because, well, Clint is a little OCD when it comes to backpacking!) and head to Fourth of July Lake.




We were right, we did have to carry Tayson quite a bit, which is tricky to do with a pack on. However, I think it had more to do with being two than having a bum toe. The boys did pretty good hiking and after the 1 3/4 miles that the sign posted, we were finally . . . not at a lake. So we kept plugging away and I think we got there about when Clint's trusty GPS said we had gone 2.4 miles. It was nice to be in the peace and quiet all by ourselves with only the 3.6 million mosquitoes. Seriously, if you sat still for five seconds there would be twenty mosquitoes on you. We took out our jackets and bundled up just to keep them off of us. We set our packs down and started to get things out to set up camp and Tayson says, "I go van. Go home, Mom." About this time I was asking myself, "Why exactly are we doing this again?"

But there were some bright moments that the boys loved. Like when they found a dragonfly that had just come out of it's nymph stage. It couldn't even fly yet so it just sat on Ethan's hand.

(Note that there are two mosquitoes on Ethan's finger along with the dragonfly!)

The scenery was beautiful and in spite of the mosquitoes, it was so nice to be out in nature and enjoy the kind of beauty you only get to see when you go backpacking.

The next morning was much better. Everyone was in better spirits and had lots of energy for the hike back. We didn't stick around long, thanks to the mosquitoes. The boys were so positive on the hike-- feeling pretty tough because we hardly had to stop. They were so dang cute with their packs on so I had to snap several shots.