Fall Break trip to the mountains

Well, evidently here in Georgia the kids get a Fall Break in addition to Spring Break. So last week they had Thursday, Friday, and Monday of this week off. My family (sisters and their families and my parents) have been wanting to do a big family weekend getaway, so we decided to head to the mountains north in the state. We couldn't find anything available to us in the north Georgia mountains, but did find some chalets at Lake Guntersville State Park in North Alabama. So we headed up Friday morning and had a blast til Sunday when we headed back. Lots of hiking, a bit of fishing, and some just good old sit around and do nothing in the evenings.


The boys had not done any hiking in quite some time. Not since a couple summers ago at Theodore National Park out in western North Dakota. And that is more hiking around buttes and canyons. They had never done any hiking on mountains. Though excited, they quickly tired...LOL (especially Connor). Still they had a wonderful time.

We decided on Saturday afternoon to go on a hike on a trail the smaller kids (Mitch and Katie) could handle. We found one that was supposed to be relatively flat and short. Well, we decided to branch off that one after a while onto another, and it turned out we had to hike down (and back up) a small cliff face! It was fun, and the kids were real troopers! Mitch tired out on the way back though, so I had to hike the last half mile or so with him on my shoulders. Yeah. That was enjoyable!

We didn't get to fish as much as Connor wanted to, so I promised I would take him and Luke out to my parents' house on the lake Monday morning to fish. I ended up having to paddle an old aluminum boat which again was loads of fun, but they had a blast. There seemed to be more playing with minnows than actual fishing, but in typical fashion, Connor always catches at least one!

No time or energy for witty descriptions of things, but I just hadn't updated the place in a while so thought I would throw this up. For more pics of the trip, just click on the Flickr badge thingy in the menu bar on the right over there... I put up some of the better pics there...