It was Labor Day. Labor Day Weekend used to be the weekend I was a motocross widow, spending the time without a husband while he helped run the WORCS National off-road event up at Bull Hollow Raceway, his parents' motocross track south of Monticello. I remember one of those weekends I was home alone waiting to go into labor with the baby girl who was "due" about two weeks previous. In the years since, Britt and I have made more of an effort to make Labor Day a mini-vacation sort of a day. Since Britt has often had church responsibilities on Sunday, we don't take off for the whole weekend, but we do try to do something fun close to our neighborhood on Labor Day itself.
This year, Britt made plans to drive up on the mountain, in the Bears Ears/Elk Ridge area and make the short hike down into the Dollhouse Ruin. Of course, the day nearly got away from us, and it was about 3:30 p.m. when we finally left town. At that point, two of my girls were in the throes of a desperate kitten rescue attempt. My youngest daughter was actually off celebrating her friend Aysia's birthday, so she wasn't with us at that point, anyway. We convinced Tyler and Rachel that they could take the baby kittens with us. And so we were off.
We drove, and drove, and drove. On bumpy, bumpy roads. Not that our truck has any kind of suspension to speak of, anyway. And we drove and drove, and hoped we were going the right way (luckily, we were). It was beautiful scenery, some stuff we didn't even realize was in our backyard.
But, it was also a lot further than what we had been planning on. About an hour longer each way than what we had thought. Absolutely worth it, though:
The view from the trail of the Dollhouse, an amazingly intact Ancient Ruin
The kids quickly checked it out
I had forgotten Rachel was making those goofy faces
That jacket Tyler is holding has the last baby kitten in it. She couldn't bear to leave it. The other baby passed away on the drive up.
Britt and I are thinking of downsizing again (not really). Do you think we could fit our family in here?
Britt checks out the interior
Is that the original corn, he wonders.
Hiking back out, with the ruin in the background.
Rachel found the perfect spot to eat.
The clouds were threatening rain, but we stayed dry during our picnic.
My guys.
Cole's dog Smokey alerted us to an intruder. We could see the bushes moving, but we never knew if it was a deer or a bear.
Cole hates it when I take pictures of him eating.
Britt and I joined Rachel on the log while we ate our own picnic dinners.
And Tyler stayed in the truck, caring for the baby kitten and eating a little bit, I hope.
Finally, we started the trek back. You can see it was starting to get dark. There was still a lot to see, though. On the way over, we witnessed deer, a coyote, squirrels and chipmunks, and a mama and baby black bear. On the way back, we saw another coyote, a beautiful large buck deer, some bats, and several crazy birds--the kind that sit on the road and then suddenly fly up at you when you drive up to them. We even actually hit one, but when Britt tried to remove the seemingly dead bird from his windshield it suddenly flew away.
The baby kitten rallied and survived the trip home. The pathetic little creature was even crying whenever we hit a nasty bump--they were harder to predict in the dark. Unfortunately, it did not survive the night after Tyler went to sleep. Tyler was heartbroken.
But we all still managed to have a fun Labor Day as a family.
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