A lovely fall hike

On a recent fall day, Karen and I jettisoned our children and headed up to Sundance to hike to the always-beautiful Stewart Falls.

It was a perfect day.

That little strip of white in the distance in the center of the pic, that's where we're headed.

The leaves were turning, the air was crisp, but not cold.

 Karen channeled her inner artist.

 That's me saying, "What are you doing?  The tree will be in the way."  I'm such a philistine.

Once we reached our destination, we dined on juicy apples, granola bars, crackers & cheese, and of course, the staple of every hike: goldfish. (The Pepperidge Farm kind, not the swimmy kind)

In all our eight years here, and multiple hikes to these falls, we'd never climbed up above the lower portion of the falls to see the pool just above and stand beneath the upper falls.  So this time we trekked on up there.

This is looking down on the lower falls.

 All of it B-E-A-you-tee-ful!

Those silly grins on our faces?  You might think it's simply because we're in this gorgeous place, each of us with our favorite person to share it with.  And that's part of it.

The other part is the blessed absence of any one of our three girls asking, "Why are we doing this?"  or, "Can we head back now?" or, "It's water and rocks.  I've pretty much seen it.  Moving on."

Sorry, girls.  I know you're reading this and are putting your hand on your hip and saying, "Dad!" right now.

We love our girls.  I mean it, really love them.  But we only like to hike with them when there are other families around.  It somehow distracts them.  Hiking with other children is the only way they really enjoy a hike.  With us, they merely tolerate it.

So this fabulous fall day really was perfect.  Just with my wife.