Pinnacles

We went to the Pinnacles and had a splendid time, except perhaps for the drive out. There's two entrances to the Pinnacles, separated by the park. Let's just say we were most of the way to one entrance when we discovered it was the Wrong One. Fortunately, the nice man at the IHop (thank you, thank you!) actually printed out all the info on the Pinnacles for us so we didn't end up going all the way to the Wrong One before going to the Right One (the campground is on the East side, for those of you who want to know). Anyways, between going the wrong way and the traffic out (and dinner at IHop) we ended up arriving well-past little people's bed times. Fortunately, it was fairly light out and warm, so setting up wasn't as bad as it could be. There was much "when are we going to be there?" from the back seat, of course.

On Saturday we went for something resembling a hike. The caves with the bats were closed, so we did a 5 mi round trip out to the other caves, which had climbing and flashlights involved. Despite my best efforts to get Isabella in a pair of shoes (screaming and wailing being the result) she ended up in flip-flops for the entire walk out, including the trek through the (dark and damp) cave. Which led to many ".... flip-flops!..." from the various international visitors passing through the cave in the other direction. There was an awful lot of piggy-back riding on the way back, but she did a lot of the hike on her own (Ian rode in the carrier). The last little bit she down-right sprinted, since we bribed her with ice cream from the store if she finished the hike without whining.

We were going to try to meet up with Pam and Mike for climbing - we failed that but did have an early evening visit with them (we got back pretty late from the hike). On Sunday we did a Mad-Dash out in order to make it to Stephane's b-day party (in the gym - Isabella and Ian are now taking gymnastic classes there). Ian, poor thing, was a bit tired, but revived when pizza and cake were served. He does like to eat - he likes cherries, which is great except for having to split them in half before giving them to him... he also, of course, wants whatever grandma has.

 The biggest hit was probably the little stream by the cave. Wading, throwing rocks, poking things with sticks, blowing on dandelions. We saw two snakes - Bill a rattler, the rest of us a striped one (King snake?). We also saw red-tailed hawks in a nest next to our camp site (we got lots of visitors to see them), bunnies, birds - Ian made sure we noticed all of them by pointing and saying "bunny!". We thought about trying out the pool, but that water was waaay too cold, even though it was pretty hot out, so we settled for ice cream.

Also did a bit of scooter riding around the camp - Ken & Sally gifted us with an Isabella-sized scooter that their daughter has outgrown. Ian still likes being pulled around on Mom's scooter, although we have now gotten him his own (which he can manage).