Summer : Part 3

Summer Part 3 is a little shorter than the last two parts.  This is mostly because the Fourth of July took up most of that time. 

This summer I really wanted to do a lot of things outdoors.  There are so many hiking trails and things to do in the mountains around our town and I wanted to explore a lot of them.  We have lived in the Cache Valley for 7 years now and we have not done hardly any of the hikes or seen many of the sights around the Valley.  We wanted to change that this summer. 

So our first hike was Richard's Hollow.  This trail is up Left Hand Fork in Blacksmith Canyon.  This hike was one I had heard about from some friends and wanted to check out.  It is also rated easy for kids so that was a plus.  The trail actually is easy up to the waterfall and then gets difficult and continues on all over the mountain linking it to Logan Canyon.  Its used by hikers and mountain bikers in the summer and snowshoers in the winter.  

We decided to just go up to the waterfall and then turn around making the hike about 3-4 miles.  The trail starts at a parking area across from the Friendship Campground up Left Hand Fork.  The trail is really well marked so the kids just ran up ahead of us.

 

Along the way we found this cool chair made out of rocks.  Logan and Charlotte had to sit in it and get a picture.  This was their favorite part of the whole hike.  We also saw this giant colorful moth on the ground.  Unfortunately it was dead but the coloring was so cool I had to take a picture of it.

About a mile into the hike, we came across this cool tepee made out of sticks.  This tepee was in a clearing near the river and looked like a camp of some sort.

Up to this point in the trail it was pretty easy going.  After this point though it started getting hard because it turned up hill.  The trail also had some rocky switch backs but we made it up.  We were not quite sure where we were going or where we wanted to end up but we knew the waterfall was supposed to be about 1.8 miles up the trail.  So we walked to where we thought 1.8 miles was and looked around for a waterfall.  We could hear water running so we climbed down what looked like a trail to the river.  From there, we saw this little spring waterfall coming out of the rocks.  It was pretty cool so this is where we stopped for a break.

The kids had a good time playing on the rocks and finding caves in the boulders.  Truly's nose was going crazy with all of the new smells so she wanted to run around smelling and exploring everything.  Brooklyn loved riding in the backpack and just liked looking at everything.  

We spent a little while here just resting and exploring before heading back down the trail to the truck.  The way back always seems shorter that going up.  By this time the sun was starting to shine through the trees so it was getting pretty warm.  It was a good time to head back.  When we got back to the truck and were able to get service on our phones, we looked up the Richard's Hollow trail on our app to see if we had gone the right way.  Come to find out the waterfall was actually about a quarter mile up farther than where we stopped.   We were bummed that we were so close but didn't go far enough to see it.  Well I guess that means we will have to go on this trail again some time to actually see the real waterfall.  I have heard that spring or early summer is a better time to go anyway because there is more water running down the waterfall.  Next Time! 

This hike was really fun even if the kids were angry that we had to go so early.  I hope we can do hikes like this more often.