A Bear went over the Mountain...

Peter took us all on an adventure last Sunday to the Blue Ridge Mountains.  The boys were so excited!

Here they are climbing up to the top!

Superman was there too.... ready for action.

Just before he took off...

 So we actually drove up the mountain and this was the main overlook at Caesars Head... it was a beautiful day and everyone was happy to see Batman and Superman.  It looks like Gabriel is admiring the view but really he is concerned with that spot of graffiti on that post there.  "Some bad man painted on the fence..." David is there too... sort of blending in... being curious.  Silly children, LOOK at the view we kept telling them.

 After some quick pictures we went searching for a little walk... that turned into a big hike.  Peter says to me in the middle of the hike "isn't this funny that we ended up going on a hike?" and I am like "no... that is what I expected to do when you said the mountains" ... what else is there to do???  But he made a good point when he said "then why didn't we bring our hiking boots"?

It turns out it was the same reason we didn't bring any food with us on this crazy-way-to-difficult hike ... we were dumb!  The boys enjoyed the first third of the hike... literally jumping down the mountain.  They became frustrated when we wouldn't let them cross a few streams by themselves and when we made them avoid several giant mudpits.  David found a tree hollow belonging to a family of bears, he told us.  So after that they were pretty occupied with looking for bear tracks in the hopes of tracking down the bear.  Once that waned, the promise of seeing two waterfalls kept them moving until the halfway point but after that they started asking to be carried.  I was pretty concerned.  "What is the worst that happens", says Peter, "we have to carry them a mile to the car"?  "YES, we have to CARRY them a MILE UPHILL to the car!" :)  I retorted jokingly but a little scared that it might come to that. So we made a pact not to pick them up and managed to persuade them with promise of ice cream to keep moving.  The poor things were so tired.  At the point of near desperation we found one pack of fruit snacks (Scooby Snacks) in the diaper bag.  (Side note - isn't it amazing how you can always find at least some small unfinished snack in a diaper bag?) The sugar rush seemed to perk the boys up just enough to get to familiar trail.  Once we knew we were almost there, we picked them up.  Instantly, Gabriel fell asleep on me.  David rode on Peter's shoulders and suggested that we run the rest of the way back - HA.  

  Here are the boys refusing to get their picture at the first waterfall.  Gabriel is looking for bugs in the tree log.  David is happy that he is the master of his tail at the moment.

The boys eating their ice cream... (anyone recognize the ice cream Peter is eating?  It is the delicious Strawberry Shortcake... not to be confused with Strawberry Cheesecake which they seem to stock much more frequently and is not nearly as good... I know... I am a source of useful information - you're welcome).  David and Gabriel LOVED their creamsicle push up pops.

 They were so happy after their ice cream, that we let them go climb on the rocks again and we literally had to drag them back to the car with promises of "come back soon" mountain.