Hocking Hills, Ohio

 While Bella was at band camp, we wanted to take our last opportunity to travel with Benjamin before his mission.  Usually we would go north and go motorcycling, but after the broken wrist, we decided something less dangerous would be better.  Hocking Hills, Ohio seemed perfect.  Lots of hiking and nothing motorized.  I'm so glad we took this trip.  I worried Benjamin wouldn't want to go but he did and it was wonderful getting to spend time together.  They are definitely memories I will cherish during the next two years.

The area is absolutely gorgeous.  So much to see just on foot.  We decided to camp so we would have money to spend on other things, such as rock climbing, horseback riding, and kayaking.  That was a great idea. The first day we hiked all over.

This hike was called "Cedar Falls."  Those aren't cedar trees and there were no falls.  Still a gorgeous hike, though.  Christian spent some time trying to see the little water drips and imagining what it must have been like when the falls were actually falling.  We were apparently too late into summer.  Everything was dried up.  I still felt like I would have loved to spend days more in the area.  It was all so amazing.

We all left rock climbing with sore fingertips and sore arms.  The guide, Sean, picked climbs that were the perfect level of difficulty - just hard enough to be really challenging, but we were all able to successfully complete them. 

Sadly, Peter was one year too young to climb.  He still had fun, though, and was a real trooper spending his birthday just watching other people climb around while he had to stay on the ground.

Peter is in a "I hate family photos" phase and refuses to be a part of them.  I'm so nervous about our professional pictures I have scheduled next week so we can have a nice family photo before Benjamin leaves.  Is this what we're going to get?

Our kayak guide was Mimi - a woman born and raised in that area of Ohio who had a real passion for nature and conservation.  She leads all sorts of tours - kayak, biking, hiking, etc.  She took us on a sunset kayak tour that was take your breath away gorgeous and gave the kids the perfect chance to swim and play and have a wonderful time.  Each called that the highlight of the trip.

Peter was eating pretzels while floating in the water.  He couldn't have been happier.

The horseback riding was good, but sadly my horse, Copper, decided to take a short cut home despite my very best efforts to lead her elsewhere and so our ride ended much too quickly.  I expected the guide to refund us or find another trail to fill the time or to use her horse abilities to make my horse comply, but she was apparently as excited about quitting early as the horse, so our one hour ride turned into a 35 minute ride with no apologies or refunds.  Pretty disappointing.  

Other than those things, we played in another lake after all our hiking and we went to the Jack Pine glass blower shop to see him work.  That was a lot of fun and it was amazing to see his beautiful use of color in his creations.  

Peter was having a lot of fun being thrown into the water by Benjamin.  Mostly, though, he swam around while the other two played football in the lake.

With so much adventure, we always slept very well at night.

Our campsite was amazing too.  Had it been busy, it would have been hard because each campsite was very, very small.  However, because we were there mid-week, we were nearly the only ones there!  So we straddled three sites with our stuff and had plenty of space the whole week.  The owners said that was totally fine.  They were so nice about it.  And it was only 20 minutes to all the things we wanted to do.