1 At Oak Table for breakfast - this is their apple pancake! It is SO big when it comes out of the oven that the cooks get excited and blow a train whistle to announce it!
2 Sam is thinking - gosh, I can't believe my parents let me get this!
3 It looks like a buffalo! Where do I start?
4 Now we're on the trail working it off! This is a big hike for the boys - 8.2 miles roundtrip and 2900 ft elevation gain. If you use a conservative rule of thumb (2 miles per hour plus an hour for every 1000 ft elevation) then it should take us 7 hours. But we rarely take that long. We will just have to see how it goes!
5 Huckleberry bear striking!
6 Yum!
7 Trying to get all four of us in the shot!
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10 Pearly Everlasting - still some wildflowers in bloom!
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12 We stopped for 5 min about once every mile.
13 Time for silly faces!
14 Sooo...we saw the clouds when we were driving over. But we decided to just go for it. I wonder if we'll break through and have a view???
15 Aster
16 Magenta Paintbrush
17 Scarlet Paintbrush (I think)
18 Marmot holes!
19 Ben pointed out the Aster for me. He's a good flower guy!
20 Harebell
21 All kinds of faces!
22 Waterfall in the middle of the shot.
23 Monkey something?
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25 Thistle!
26 It's still foggy! we are entering the clouds at around 5000 ft!
27 About a mile to go!
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29 Daddy is singing funny songs from Tom and Jerry (Peco's Pest episode).
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31 This looks pretty epic, doesn't it?
32 We are almost there!
33 Encouraging??!!
34 Such a Sound of Music view...if there was one! This is really neat, though.
35 At the summit!
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38 Snack time!
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41 This little guy is quite nice :)
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43 Mr Chippy has a nice view every day! I love this picture. I had to creep up but QUICK to capture him!
44 Panorama of our summit spot.
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46 The clouds were literally rolling over the summit around us as they came up and over then down the other side.
47 Thanks for being ALL IN, honey, despite your misgivings about the clouds!
48 Crazy boys are the stars when there are no distracting views to compete with :)
49 Enjoy the antics...
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51 Very good, Sam!
52 Playing some Led Zeppelin
53 The sun popped out for 23 seconds and this is the picture they gave me!!! AAARGH! :)
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55 The gum ranger provides some teeth cleaning supplies :)
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59 Can you tell these are my favorite wildflowers?
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61 On our way down. We actually made impressive time - it was 2 hours to the summit, and 1.5 hours down, so 3.5? Half the estimated time. We all had a great time and the boys were incredible! They did it in great form. I really loved spending time with the family on this trail. We'll have to go back for wildflowers and views!
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63 A couple phone shots.
64 See how the clouds are rolling over from left to right (west to east)?
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66 They were a little tired and we were ALL HUNGRY!!!