We woke to a beautiful sunrise.

Then we did a very chill walk up the road. Awesome view. Everyone was in a good mood. We stopped and read the memorials. It was an upbeat morning. The views of the valley persisted for a long time and Toothless just couldn’t get enough of it. He even took a photo with Natasha’s phone. He squealed with excitement at the views today.

We saw a lot of people and had a pretty social day.  Mess Life walked with us for a while when he ate. We chatted and it was cool. We saw Delicate Flower and a few others we have been chatting with over the past few days. It sounds like we might end up in Julian on the same day.

The afternoon was hot but I think Natasha and I alternated carrying Toothless at a good cadence. We are getting into a routine and not having one parent do all the carrying too often in a row. That kills the shoulders and makes everyone less happy. Our routine is now that we take a break, Toothless hikes for a set amount of “time”. If he’s feeling like hiking he just counts. So 10 minutes might actually be 60 minutes if he spends 6 minutes having fun between remembering to count. Or if he’s not into it and needs a rest it might actually be 10 minutes. Either way he gets an opportunity to try it and see how he feels instead of going straight to shoulder carry. Then mom and dad usually alternate carrying the kids. I like this a lot more. Lil Flier and I got to play a bunch and she loves trying to take my phone out of my pocket. But she does seem to prefer to sleep with me when I carry her.

We got to two water sources today. The second one tasted better. First one had cold concrete. That was nice. Lil Flier spent a bunch of time assisted standing and playing. She’s been trying to eat rocks and dirt. At the water source she sat on the concrete so that kind of limited the dirt she could reach

We found a decent campsite at dinner time. Another big push but doable.

The kids are fast asleep.

Toothless wanted to be called “the paleontologist” today as his trail name. He has been pretending to find dinosaur bones on trail all day.  We also keep singing songs. Dumb ways to die is on the family radio (aka us singing) today.