A Fambly Hike

As I may have mentioned once or twice, on Saturday we headed up to Medicine Bow National Forest, which is just outside of Centennial, WY. This story all takes place in, if I recognize the satellite photos correctly, this region.

Our first stop was at the picnic area next to the bottom lake in the satellite image. There, we met up with my brother, DougyC, and his wife, KathyC. It was DougyC's birthday. We got him a six-pack of beer. They're from Wisconsin, so we don't see them all that often, though lately it's been a lot more often than it had been. Darn near once a year.

HannahC was very excited to find this, which she labeled Mandrake (I'm pretty sure it isn't). DougyC and I then sat around and said, "Mandrake the Magician?" a lot, and that drove HannahC insane. Which is admittedly not too difficult a thing to do, given her heritage and all.


After a picnic lunch where the entertainment was watching a continuous procession of fly fishermen show up, spend a half hour fiddling with their gear, go down to the lake and fish for 20 minutes, and then leave disappointed, we went on our hike. I'm not exactly sure if the hike had an objective, as in a destination. I think the plan was to just walk up the hiking path until we got tired, then turn around and come back. That was what we did, at least, and no one seemed too unhappy about it.

I've carefully marked out our trek as an overlay to the map. Clipart is a wonderful thing.


MaxieC was ready for adventure.


For some reason, every time I see this photo I think "Sherpa". But why an unsuccessful attempt to join two Madison die with a custom power and memory chip on a single substrate has anything to do with this, I don't know. (A little work-related humor that, at best, one of my readers will understand...)


Something is apparently very interesting over to the right. Or else HannahC has to pee.


Here's a little lake that we stopped at to play in a snow field. HannahC decided to see how far out she could climb on the boulders without getting her feet wet - a little game many of us were playing. HannahC, unfortunately, spent too much time concentrating on not getting her feet wet and not enough time concentrating on not getting her torso wet.

She fell in, in case you didn't figure that out. I'm never sure with this crowd.


MaxieC was unimpressed with the quality of the suspension on his ride:


And finally, a picture I like to call, "Holy smokes. You can see my gut from there?" You may need to click on the photo to see it full size