Oh, Gracie!

Our Hiking Trip

     Hello everyone! Summer is over and I'm back. I didn't do a lot, but in August my brother convinced almost everyone to go hike and camp for three days and two nights. I wasn't as keen on this idea, seeing as I had a friend coming over that night for a sleepover and I didn't have a chance to do anything because they decided at dinner.
     In all, it turned out pretty well, and I'm going to tell you all about it. I was in charge of taking the pictures, and there are some pretty good ones!
     We were up in the mountains, so it was different from what I'm used to. You can see the sea from my house.

     So off we went, over-packed and not knowing how this was really going to turn out.

 The view from the parking lot. ^

 Hike begins...

Up the steep and rooty path

 A whiskey jack

 First break

 Back to walking

 Water! If only I could jump into it from here...

     After climbing up a mountain with a path that I called the Secret Stairs because it felt that steep, we finally arrived at the lake. We were exhausted! We went swimming at a different lake to refresh ourselves and wash a little.

 The view from the path near our campsite ^

 We headed out on a shorter hike to a canyon. ^

We stopped for a minute to sit at this little waterfall ^

     Once we got to the canyon, I got really paranoid. My siblings (in my opinion) were going way too close to the edge. I was trying to keep them from falling off the edge, but of course they didn't. I was actually pretty glad to leave even though the view was pretty amazing. We could hear a waterfall across the canyon.

On the way back I took more pictures of the lake. It was called Lake Beautiful for a reason!

     The way back was much better than the way there. We left early in the morning when it was nice and cool, and got back 100% unharmed! For the last day my sister and I kept saying, "I want to go home and pet Gracie." We were so happy to get home!