WEDNESDAY

Still no water for showers when we woke up, but last night each cabin was supplied with a big Culligan water bottle filled with tap water from the owners' home a few miles away. This way we all could at least get our teeth brushes, faces washed, coffeepot filled, and toilet flushed!

It is super cold out today-the high is only supposed to get to 48. It's a good thing that we brought our winter coats!

Today we met in front of the lodge for a wagon ride up the canyon to a campsite for a cowboy breakfast cookout. Grown-ups got to ride horses up there though. Mom said that it was too cold and windy for a horseback ride, so she came in the wagon with us instead.

We beat Dad and the horses to the campsite, so we wagon riders got to eat first!

It was eggs, ham steaks, fried potatoes and blueberry muffins, juice and coffee.

After that we got back on our rides and continued up the canyon to a high point where we had to do a little rock climbing to get to an open cave named "Goat's Cave." (So named because of all the goat poop pellets everywhere!)

Native Americans also used this site at one point because lots of arrowheads and flint could be found.

After we explored the cave a bit Dad took us kids rock climbing up to the top of the bluff. It was awesome up there! Mom wasn't interest in climbing way up that high, so she stayed down at the cave and took pictures of us way up high instead.

Later when we finally got back to the lodge is was almost lunch time, so we hung out there playing games and drinking hot chocolate and coffee to warm up. Lunch was homemade pizza, salad and lemon bars-Yum!

After lunch we all took a trail ride. Dad and Nick took the intermediate trail while Mom, Doug and Christina stuck with the beginner ride.

Mom decided to give up on Diesel too. It turns out that enough other people complained about how temperamental he was that she figured that it wasn't her that was the problem! She didn't want Diesel to succeed in scaring her out of ever riding a horse again, so she rode Sam instead and absolutely loved it! He's now her horse for the rest of the week. It turns out that Sam likes to take his time and move slowly down the steep hills, and isn't interested in getting too close to the horse in front of him. (Diesel always seemed to have his nose up another horses butt-thus Mom was constantly at risk of getting kicked by the horse in front of her!)

Mom and Dad kept in touch on our separate trail rides via walkie-talkie. It was cool to be able to look way across the canyon and see each other on our horses.

After the ride Mom took us kids to the pond for some fishing. Dad got us all started by showing us how to bait our hooks and cast our lines. Then he was off to do some rock climbing up some new bluffs.

About 15 minutes later Nick caught a huge catfish! Luckily, Mom got pictures and even took a 20 second video clip of him reeling it in. Then we had to throw it back. That's how the pond stays stocked. Neither Mom or Nick could get the hook out of the fish's mouth though, and Dad wasn't any help over the walkie-talkie, so we sent Christina back to the barn to fetch us a wrangler to help. She brought Jessie back, and Jessie couldn't get it out either so she cut the line instead.

We went back to the lodge to wait for Dad. He said he had a great time and got to the top of his bluff which was about 80 feet straight up.

Next was dinner. Tonight it was baked chicken, wild rice, green beans, rolls and cheesecake for dessert. Then we had a bonfire outside and roasted marshmallows. That was lots of fun! Barry (the owner) told us that the water was finally back on, but we ended the night by relaxing outside in the hot tub to clean off instead. (We figured that everybody would be running inside to hit the showers so that the water pressure wouldn't be what we expected. So we just planned to take 5 showers in the morning.) That was so cool! You could see stars forever out there. It was close to 10:00 by the time we got back to the cabin for tucking in.

Continued on Thursday
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