Moonhouse Ruin

My birthday fell on a Saturday this year, so i told Devon that I wanted to go hiking. I just have grown to really enjoy a good adventure hike over the past year. We invited our friend Kelsey to join us for the weekend, and also the couple missionaries who are new to our area wanted to join. I looked up what I thought looked like a great hike- but not too hard on this website that my brother-in-law Spence recommended. We did end up having an amazing adventure. So first off the site said that we did not need 4 wheel drive to get to the ruin. Some spots were so tricky looking that we almost turned around even with our 4 wheel drive, but we have had a lot of rain lately, maybe it's usually better.  I think we may have surprised the missionaries a little with our version of "adventure" but now they are ready for anything.
So from what i read this was a .75 mile hike with a little scrambling.  We saw this ruin across the canyon and thought "that looks amazing, but we can't be going there"

But we did go there.  Straight down the canyon and straight up.  It was great climb, and really not too hard since it was short.

The ruin was probably the most amazing not restored ruin I have seen.  They had this outer wall with line of sight holes to see all points of entry into the canyon.

There were paintings inside of the rooms

you could even see the mud and sticks they used to build the walls, I think because the outer wall preserved it so well.  It was amazing.

It took longer than I thought, but we did get home in time to go on a date and the boys and the babysitter made me a happy birthday sign.  It was a great day!

Other pictures from the summer.  My sister and her family and Devon's brother came and helped us move.  With their help (and a few guys form here) we moved and cleaned in one day, which was absolutely amazing.  Thanks so much for your help guys.

You don't need a skateboard to enjoy a skate park!

California Trip

Our friends the Porters invited us to come to their house in San Fransisco before they sold it at the end of the summer. I have never been to that part of California so we jumped at the chance. I have mixed emotions about this trip because it turned out to be a ton of driving in a short time and little harder on our kids than we expected, so they weren't the angels the usually are (haha). We did have a fun time though and make great memories, as long as we forget the driving. So first we went to Devon's Granma Deon's house in LA. I had just listened to a podcast about the LaBrea tar pits so we went and checked them out. They are pretty amazing pits of asphalt actually that have bones of many extinct animals like an american horse, camel and lion.  It was interesting to learn about, and we got to eat from a food turck, so that was fun too.

The next day we traveled up the coast highway to San Fransisco, of course we had to stop and play at the beach, and Devon got lots of cool pictures.

The Pacific Coast highway was beautiful, and very winding, so Carrie threw up, I didn't know babies got car sick before Carrie came along, she definitely inherited Devon's genes on this one.  I'd say it was worth the drive though.

Near San Fransisco there is a little pocket of Redwoods that were too hard to log when lots of Redwoods were cut down, so they are still there.  I was reminded many times of the huge population of California cities, the parking here was crazy, people were parked literally miles down the road.  We got luck on a parking spot.

The trees were really big.  We had a fun hike with Lisa and her kids.  It was ood to see so much forest right next to the city.

On the last day we went into San Fransisco.  It is a really pretty city, right on the ocean.  We had to stop at the free games.

We were lucky enough to be there when the Sea lions were, they were quite entertaining to watch.
Also at the pier we ate some amazing sea food- clam chowder, calamari and some other fish.  We all loved it, even Carrie!
Then we rode the trolly (I don't know how we don't have a better picture of this) to China town.

China town was the boys favorite part.  I really loved it too.  They had lots of fun little shops with cool stuff in them.  I think the boys liked it because they could buy toys.  They also like dancing to the music that people played on every corner.

They were filming a movie here, this looked way too staged to be real, but still cool.

We drove over the Golden Gate bridge on the way home.

Devon, Scott and Spencer went to an A's game.

Also not pictured but not to be forgotten we went to an amazing sea food restaurant called "Dead Fish."  We had crab cakes, calamari and something else with crab.  Thanks Porters for hosting and touring and everything- we made some great memories and had a great time!