Celebrating the 4th in the High Country

We decided to not only get out of the house, but get out of town to celebrate the 4th of July. We headed up north where we planned to go on a hike. This time of year, it is much more pleasant to go hiking up in the northern part of AZ.

Our original plan was a hike up in Oak Creek Canyon. On the way, we drove through Sedona. Love this place and all its landscape. Sedona is a fun town filled with cool stuff.

We drove through the canyon and found the hike we wanted to do. Unfortunately, many people had the same idea and there wasn't any parking. We went to plan B, which we made up as we went. We drove through the rest of canyon up to the lookout out point to view the whole of Oak Creek Canyon.

So prepare for photo overload. The views here are awesome!

Again, that's the road we drove on that goes through the canyon.

Me and my girls.

I wished we had asked someone there to take our picture. It would have been perfect to have Randy in the picture, instead of taking it.

Kara being silly.

We were looking at the different native American jewelry that was being sold there.

After Oak Creek, we continued on to Flagstaff for lunch. We stopped at Chick-fil-a. They had someone there making balloon things. So the kids stood patiently in line for 30 minutes to get these awesome balloon creations.

After lunch, we decided to head to SnowBowl to try out some hiking over there. It was nice and cool.

In the winter time, this very spot is where people go skiing. See the lifts?! I think they give people rides during the off season. 

Can you tell the kids are game for this hike?!

We lost half our gang as we were going into the forest. So the boys and I headed back to round them up. 

Those clouds were the reason we lost half our gang. Just as we were heading into the forest, we heard very loud thunder. 

 We convinced them that it would be alright. So the rest of them reluctantly came along. 

Because of the high altitude, some of the kids had headaches. Poor things. But those that did have headaches were troopers and just kept hiking. 

It was still a little gloomy. The clouds were rolling in.  

We decided to head back after hiking in there for 30 minutes. We found out that to get to the end of the trail would take 2.5 hours. 

 We stopped for a picture before the end of our hike. We took this picture with my phone camera, which is why it isn't very clear, but I had to post it because I love this shot. It was a fun day. I love doing things with my family. 

HAPPY FOURTH OF JULY!!!