Hiking

My brother's birthday was last weekend and since he took the day off, he wanted to go for a hike. 

We drove up into the hills and hiked for a couple of hours. The sun was out at first which made it feel pretty hot, then the clouds came in and it cooled down and felt much better! Of course the sun was out during the first part of our hike, which is all uphill! 

Anyways, we had a nice time hiking and it was nice to see the hills all green and nice looking. During the summer the grass dies and then everything is just brown and ugly. 

We even saw a weird looking lizard. And lots of cows. There is a gate you go through on the trail and then there are cows grazing all around. It's kind of creepy walking along and having cows staring at you! 

Air Show

Back in October there was an air show out at the air national guard base near where we live. We'd been to several air shows over the years and they're always pretty fun. 

We arrived in the morning and stayed through the afternoon, when the last show ended.

First up, we saw the Snowbirds from the Royal Canadian Air Force. We had seen them quite a few years ago at an air show in Canada, and they put on a great show!

The Snowbirds ended their show with their representation of a maple leaf.

After the Snowbirds there were a few other a few other planes that came out and did some stunts. There was one guy in I don't know what kind of plane it was, but he would fly really high and then let the plane free fall so it was just falling end over end. Like if you were to throw a toy plane up in the air. It was pretty weird to see!

Next up we saw the USAF Thunderbirds. While we all agreed they aren't quite as good as the Blue Angels, they still put on a pretty great show! 

And interestingly, two of the Thunderbird's pilots are women!

The Thunderbirds flew closer to where we were sitting so I was able to get much better pictures.

Have you ever been to an air show?

Hiking in Stanley

Last month we made a last-minute decision to drive up to Stanley, Idaho to go for a hike. My brother and sister both had a day off, so it was the perfect chance to go! 

The drive up took us about 3 hours despite the fact it was only like 130 miles. The road was SO twisty and went up and down and there were spots where you would have to slow to 20 mph, and then speed up and slow down. Needless to say I was quite nauseous! And I was glad my brother was doing the driving! 

Once we finally started getting near Stanley, we were really surprised to find people everywhere! This was the weekend before the Fourth of July, but we had no idea so many people would be up there! After a bit of driving we finally found a spot to eat our lunch at the trail-head. 

We loaded up a backpack with some water bottles and set off on our hike! The hike was fairly easy but there was lots to see! We saw trees and mountains and wild flowers. We didn't see much wildlife except for a very excited chipmunk who chattered very noisily at us as we walked by! And we also saw a bunch of antelope on the drive back. It was all quite pretty! 

We eventually reached a clearing with kind of a swampy area, that signaled the end of that part of the trail. The view was pretty but the mosquitoes were TERRIBLE. Just awful. The closer we got to that marshy area the worse they got. So we didn't stick around long.

We turned around and started walking back to the car. It was getting  kind of late by the time we reached the car, so we drove around a little by the lake just to check it out before heading back home. We took a different route home, one that took us near Sun Valley, and that route was way less treacherous! I wish we had took that route up, but we didn't know.

Overall we enjoyed the hike and it was nice to get away for the day and see some nice scenery!