We enjoyed a hike at Redstone Trail, in the Lake Mead National Area.
TGIF! Excited that it’s Friday, though the weather looks crappy outside, overcast and with chances of rain for today, so maybe we won’t be able to do much exploring. It actually ended up raining a bit in the morning, and we had a quick hail storm come through as well. Ice balls the size of 2 peas hitting the trailer was actually kind of cool. The storm outside looked crazy. Sometimes one side looked crazy bad weather and the other side looked nice and sunny. When the big storm came through, it was dark on both sides. I’m glad we had the trailer leveled properly so no water was running towards the trailer this time. The weather definitely held us up until late morning, and we left a little later because the girls (Bella) were not all done with school work.
I spent a good amount of the morning updating my travel records and working on a few more reservations. I’m trying to get as much done as I can for the rest of the trip, so we don’t have any surprises. Florida turned out to be quite expensive, so I’m glad we have Thousand Trails to get some weeks booked on those campgrounds and save a bit. I have 3 more campground times to book and I think I can do all on TT, but I can only book 60 days in advance, so I will have to wait 3 weeks or so to do one of those and hope there will be sites open by then. I’ll make sure to put on my calendar so I don’t miss it the first day I can. As I looked through the records, high level, it looks like the total distances and campground costs are in line with what I had planned. I’ll need to reconcile it all later to see how close or far I came on gas and food. Gas was so much more in CA that maybe I was off. But then we may have made up on TT stays, though I had some of that accounted for in costs as well. But, overall I felt we are close, so that feels good. Florida lodging will likely push us out. Anyway, that was most of my morning, and also fighting with the wifi from the campground. It keeps going on and off, makes me mad.
Carol worked on some video stuff and getting her gimbal going and getting used to it.
The girls were fooling around a bit. Bia had work to submit that she only sent 2 facts with instead of 3, saying she didn’t have time to get the third… made me mad because she finished early every day, so no excuse about not having time. I had to talk to both about getting work done. Let’s see if it sinks in. Bella has been trying to skip reading the lesson and going right to the work, then guessing the answers… not good. I had another talk with her about that as well. Seems like after the talks they are a bit more focused on getting work done this morning, and less messing around. At the end of the school day, Bia was all done, but Bella had not finished science, so I’ll have her do it tomorrow morning.
In one of Bella’s breaks, she made a top with the fabric from some pants she had and some other strings. I think I posted a picture of this yesterday. She was super proud of it and modeled it a bit. hahahah.. She loves taking stuff apart and making new things out of it. She’s made clothing for Maggie before that way, and has made a few shirts and shorts out of grocery store plastic bags. This top she said she does not like to buy, but only wears ones she makes out of old clothes. At the end of the day she said she didn’t like to wear it as much as it made her nipples hurt after a long time. hahahaha… She’s said before that she wants to be a fashion designer when she grows up. Lately, she’s saying she wants to be a food critic… hahaha… she’s into watching the movie Ratatouille right now, and she’s watched it enough that she can say line by line now.
As lunch time approached, the weather also improved. Carol made rice and I grilled steaks outside. Bia did the salt on the steaks, as she’s been enjoying doing that part. We had lunch, got things here ready to leave, and were out the door around 2pm.
We went to a trail called Redstone, still within the Lake Mead National area, it was like 30 some miles away. It was a beautiful drive, and as per the area, lots of mountains and valleys. Lots of crazy rock formations too. Just amazing scenery all around. The trail is just in the middle of nowhere it felt, you’re driving and then there it is, with a small parking lot and restrooms. There supposedly is a trail, but we didn’t really see it so we just started walking towards the mounts of sandy rocks and such.
The mounts had lots of indentations, round holes, paths, and some formed figures that looked like heads, faces, and such. Carol and the girls went to that area and started climbing in, walking into “apartments”, etc. It’s pretty cool.
I kept walking trying to go as far up as I could while being somewhat close to them. We had amazing views from there, and were having a lot of fun. Eventually, they joined me up and we walked a bit higher. Then we decided to go back.
Bia and I wanted to take the more “adventurous route” so we went towards the cliffs as it looked like there was a way through. Carol and Bella just returned the way we came. As Bia and I got deep in the canyon, the path got harder and harder to climb down, requiring some balancing, pulling up, hanging, and finding the right place to place our feet and hands. It was quite demanding. I got through and got Bia down, then we did it again on the next one, and it got harder and harder.
We were getting all dusty from rubbing against the walls, which were all dirt sand. Then we got to a very narrow area, and Bia went through first, then I did.
And that was the end of it as that path ended at the edge of a cliff, and there was no way down from there, and we were still way too high.
This meant we’d need to find another way back, or just go back the way we came, which I knew would be pretty hard. Well, there was no other way back that looked safer than going back the way we came, so back we went. As we went back, there were two areas we had to go up 7-8 feet, so I had to climb up myself, then have Bia climb just enough so I could pull her up. The tallest one, after I climbed up, Bia could not make her way far enough for me to get her. It was a twisted uphill where you start the climb on one side, then turn your body around and continue on the other side. Bia could not do all of that, so I eventually lowered myself down the main gap, so she could grab my shoes, while I held my body by positioning my elbows at the entrance of the hole, so I would not slip. She pulled herself up, I pulled my foot, and she was soon close enough for me to grab one of her hands and finish pulling her up. That was difficult, but it was super cool to do it with Bia. She didn’t freak out, she didn’t get desperate or worried, she just kept trying and going and we did it. We both felt great we had this little adventure together, and we got through the challenge. That was an awesome moment. Then as we walked back on the original path we made to get up there, we could see Carol and Bella way down getting close to the parking area. It didn’t take us long to get back to the parking area and leave. We had a really nice hike, and all enjoyed the spot, exploring the rocks and the holes on the mountains, or apartments, as the girls were calling them.
We drove back towards the campground, and Carol wanted to make a stop along the way for pictures of the sunset. We watched the sunset as we drove, the amazing views of mountains, then Lake Mead, but ended up not stopping as none of the stops had great sunset views. I pulled into two of them, but we didn’t stop. From there, we went to the grocery store. Carol went down to get stuff while I stayed in the truck with the girls. Carol took a while as she was looking for polenta stuff, and was having a hard time finding it. Bella was hungry and kept asking me to call Carol hahahahaha. Almost an hour later Carol came back, and had a small bag of gold fish crackers so the girls could eat a snack as we drove back.
When we got back, we started showers, Carol made Polenta and Chicken with red sauce, and we had dinner. It was delicious! Everyone ate everything and there were a few repeats. The polenta is completely gone, and we have some chicken for later. We cleaned up after dinner and Carol got the hard drive that she has a bunch of movies on. We connected the drive to the TV, and I chose to watch Herbie Reloaded, or whatever it is called. It’s the newer version with Lindsay Lohan, I mean, newer as in the last 15 years hahahaha.. The girls didn’t know what was coming, and they LOVED the movie… they were excited the entire movie, and were talking about it for a while after as well. The HD connected to the TV worked pretty well, and the image quality was great. We can also do this on the TVs in the truck now, so we may try it at some point. After the movie, we got ready for bed and called it a day. I’m excited to check out Valley of Fire state park tomorrow.
It was a nice chill Friday, interesting storm, first hail storm with the trailer, and a nice hike at Redstone trail.