Most of the following links lead to descriptions and photos from each hike. Enjoy!
El Porvenir Trail with Shayna - Up and down Beaver Creek Trail in the Pecos Wilderness with Shayna
Tucumcari Mountain Attempt with Brenna - A Small Equipment Trial with Brenna up the local "mountain".
Tucumcari Mountain Success with Boys - The First Ascent of the Nemrow Boys!
Tucumcari Mountain Attempt with Shayna - Blisters with Shayna.
Hermits Spring with Boys - The First Big Guy Hike!
Indian Lake with Girls - A Little Jaunt to Indian Lake at Girls Camp.
Lone Pine Mesa and Hermits Peak with Brenna - Brenna's First (and Last?) Big Hike with Dad.
Lone Pine Mesa and Hermits Peak with Boys - The Boys Sail Through Faster Than Anticipated
Everybody except Lisa and Brenna at Tucumcari Mountain - A Prelim Hike for Shayna and Jay
Hermits Peak and Beaver Creek with Shayna - Just to say we could do a better job than the last time
Hermits Peak with Sam and Caleb - The two youngest go it alone with Dad.
Hermits Peak with Matt and Josh - the two older boys sleep at the top with Dad.
Yurt Camping with Lisa - A State Park in Colorado with Yurts and Lisa.
Father and Son Camp with the Boys - The boys are supportive of a church stake campout.
Duran Canyon with the Whole Family - Everyone finally gets into the outdoor spirit!
La Cueva Trail #8 with Sam and Caleb - The two youngest boys were the only ones willing to hike with Dad on the 2010 family camping trip.
Everyone who hikes much at all has an opinion on the equipment they use. Here is my equipment list.
Due to the wonderful generousity of Mark Jurey, I am mirroring his wonderful information on how to build a "Pennystove" and other cool backpacking info!
I hiked when I was a teenager and liked it. I still like it.
Now that I have money and stability of job, I find I am lacking a bit of adventure. I used to handle that through gut-wrenching career changes, but now my glorious wife Lisa has put such behavior to an end. Adventure becons, though.
I had collected a bit of equipment over the years, figuring that I would go backpacking with my kids at some point, but I was not getting to it. We are essentially couch potatoes and it was just easier to lay there than to get out and hike.
Then, there came girls camp.
Other people had always handled Girls Camp and no one had ever really asked me if I wanted to go. Those people got tired or moved, so I took over the position, in Shayna's second year. I got frisky and decided to plan a massive backpacking adventure, ending up at the camp the girls use. It was a fiasco that is recorded in this folder for the ages, including what I learned.
Then, the kids wanted to go to Disney World.
A few years later, Lisa brought up the Disney World idea. Years of suffering and saving could net us thousands and thousands of dollars, all to be spent in two weeks in the distant future on stuff I would likely need therapy to recover from. It sounded like the great fun I had been missing all this time! Not! I was less than enthusiastic.
Then, Jay used his rusty math skills.
I figured that I could buy a lot of backpacking equipment for something much less than thousands and thousands of dollars and we could spend time together (that is the point of vacationing, right?) wearing out this equipment over the course of some years, starting like next week. We didn't have to put off the fun to the next decade!
Lisa was dubious. It was important to start the propoganda with the kids and act like this would be a democratic decision. I found it laughably easy to sucker the kids into thinking hiking was great fun and they mentioned to their mother, with precious little prodding from me, that going to the mountains would be better than puking our guts out and sweating to death in central Florida.
Then, Lisa decided she wanted to go camping, too.
So far, it seems, so good. You can see for yourself from the reports included here. Soon, you too will con your family into blisters, bears, and the happy torture of camping! Thank me now before you get yourself killed!