Hiking Donut Falls

So in trying to salvage the last little bit of Summer (because I don't want to rush into Fall) I decided we needed to go on another hike. We've actually done quite a few this year and I'm pretty proud of that. It's nice that they are free and you get to be out in nature, without screens (other than pictures). We decided Donut Falls would be fun. I remember doing the hike quite a few years back (before kids) and it wasn't too bad. 

This time around, it was a bit longer than I remembered. It didn't help that we passed a family going down as we were heading up and the dad mentioned "good luck! Hope you make it farther than we did." I didn't have time to ask why so I thought "oh no, what did I get us into?" It also didn't help that a bridge was out so about a third of the way up you had to actually go around this mini parking lot and find a different route (a bit of backtracking was involved).

The scenery on the hike and up at the "top" was very pretty and the leaves were just barely starting to change so we got to see that (which made it hard to ignore my "it's not fall" feelings haha)

The kids got tired pretty quickly, but were pretty good troopers and we did end up making it to the top. I remember when we came last time you had to climb big rocks to get to the falls area, but this time the big rocks looked different. I couldn't see the cave that you could see the donut part, it was just really big rocks. It made me think they must have had a rock slide that covered the cave. We saw MANY people climbing the rocks to the top of it, but no one going to a cave area. 

At one point, I took Cara up closer, and I finally saw where I thought the cave might be, but I knew we wouldn't be able to go up there with Pierce and Lucy so we kind of turned around so I could tell Larry about it. He took Cara and Gwen and they not only climbed up to the cave, but they climbed up to the top part.

Unfortunately, the girls all mentioned when we got to the big rocks that they needed to go to the bathroom (despite us asking at the beginning AND the 1/3 way up if they needed to use the bathrooms...guess we should've pointed out those would be the last bathrooms for us). They held out well enough though.

After eating some snacks, drinking water, and resting for a bit, we headed back down. I was hoping to also go to the pool today, but when I saw it was 5:00 and we were still heading down AND had to eat dinner, I knew that was out. It's unfortunate, because today is the last day the pool is open and I really wanted to get one last swim with the kids in...oh well.

The worst part is my really cute hiking water shoes started to fall apart about 1/3 of the way down. It started with one shoe, the heel part was coming off. I thought I could glue it back together, but by the time we got to the bottom BOTH shoes had the bottoms coming off and were just held on by the front strap (which REALLY made for an annoying hike down). Cara also took a couple spills and had some pretty big scratches along her legs, side, arms, and belly. Poor girl.

As we were driving back down I thought it would be fun to go to Chuck-A-Rama for dinner. Last time we went there it was really good and I thought it would be good that everyone could pick what they wanted. When we got there I noticed we were all extremely messy so we looked terrible, but that's okay, it's not like the buffet has high standards. Unfortunately, this time, the food wasn't good, at all. Even the ice cream tasted watered down. It was bit of a disappointment, but at least the kids ate most of what they got and we didn't have to fight them. 

Now, we're back, a big shower was done and kids are to bed. It was a good day off from work and school and I'm glad we got out of the house and did something good for us.