Natural Bridge

This weekend Aunt Melanie decided to pay us a visit. Since she was coming down from the suburbs of the North Pole, we decided to let her get out in the sunshine of Arizona. We went for a family adventure to hike a mountain (since the girls keep asking to go hiking all the time). Melanie was great and rode in the back seat between the girls everywhere we went (and the hike was about a 1.5 hour drive each way). Once we got there, everyone was excited to see the cool views. 

We went to Tonto Natural Bridge State Park where we could hike down into a canyon and see what we could find. The girls were excited to get the day started.

We hiked about a half mile back and forth to get straight down into the bottom of the canyon. We found a cool cave down at the bottom of the trail. Here we all are looking for bats.

The natural bridge is a huge rock arch formation in the bottom of the canyon. 

Here is the crew at the bottom (the extra lady struggling to get out is not actually part of our family, but I don't know how to use photo shop).

A few more pictures of all of us down in the bottom looking around.

Inside the arch, the river formed a giant pool

 (except they don't allow swimming there :( ).

We took a few pictures inside the arch looking around.

The hiking Meldrums.

On the way out Rach decided we should go the long way back up the canyon. This was much longer and required lots of climbing over boulders and jumping over the river. Everyone enjoyed the challenge (the sign at the exit said this was very challenging and not for the faint of heart).

Since it was such a long hike back out, we stopped to play in the river for a minute. That was the only time Miles got to be out of the backpack. You can see he was a little excited for this portion of the trip! (he got to do one of his favorite things and play with rocks) 

While hiking out, we got to walk past the waterfall that feeds the river. The water was seeping out of the rocks and created a natural shower.

It was a great hike up in the mountains. 

Cooler weather, neat landscape, and lots of hard work.