Castlewood Canyon

We wanted to meet up with our buddies the Hodsons, and agreed to do so at Castlewood Canyon. RD has told me many times of rappelling and climbing around the rocks with his friends, including Brian, as a teen, and that would have been the place of our first kiss if Nate hadn't been spying on us ;)
The kids weren't excited about a hike (shocker) but we lured them with big boulders to climb, which is pretty fun.
We accidentally ended up going on a two-mile hike, and it was about 95 degrees outside when we were done, but it was fun to be with them, and it was a beautiful place. The first part was mostly through trees, and some rocks to climb, and we paused at a great shallow slow part of the river. RD caught three craw-dads, which a couple kids touched. Several of them got pretty deep and wet, but it felt great!

We continued on, RD finally being able to scramble around the rocks, with the older kids and Brian. Reese thought he was pretty cool to be able to jump over the river from boulder to boulder.

It took a bit more work to figure out how to meet up with the rest of us, but they did, and we went through the last meadow part of the hike with a great view of Pike's Peak. Western CO is So beautiful; Sitka is gorgeous but so rainy, the mountains are so close in Springville, but it's green and sunny and distant mountains in CO. We love it.
The youngest ones were all done shortly after crossing the river, and were carried the rest of the way.

The other kids had various scrapes and spills, but recovered quickly. Ady seems like a cheerful sweetheart, she and Grace were fun to hike with. The boys were ahead, wanting to be done sooner, so we didn't have to hear complaining :)
We were all sweaty and done, so reluctantly said goodbye and headed back to lunch.

That night Gramp set up the screen he and Reese had made last fall (they didn't get to use then) and the projector to watch a movie outside on the deck. Reese made some suggestions for placing the screen that worked much better, to Gramp's chagrin. Sometimes the know-it-all is right, darn it.  Kids popped popcorn, we snuggled under blankets, and enjoyed Secondhand Lions. That was a lot of fun, though it was late enough when it was done the kids headed straight for bed on their own.

The next day we went to church, hung out, did family history, and Grandma made mini apple pies with help from Grace, which were fabulous! A sweet end to a great visit.