This year is our Tour de New Mexico. To start out we thought we'd take a quick journey about 5 miles up the road to Petroglyph National Monument. We picked a pristine day for it as i
t was about 70 degrees with a light breeze. We were quite a site with Porter leading the way, Zachary limping behind and Andrew taking 5 steps to our one. The 
2 1/2 mile hike seemed impossible, but we were determined. Luckily, mom had prepared some trail mix and filled up the H2O bottles. We didn't see much in the first little while and with the whining we were starting to get discouraged. Finally, we stopped for a rest and while the boys sat on a rock, I climbed up the volcanic rocks and located a wealth of Navajo graffiti. This peaked the boys' interest. Porter tapped into his uncle Mike's climbing abilities, Zachary forgot about his still too prevelant limp. Both of them starting climbin
g to locate the "rattlesnake", "lobo", "turtle" and "funny man" that dad had found. These sites brought new energy into the expedition. Now instead of the constant "I wanna go back to the car" requests we watched our oldest boys help each other climb up the rocks hungry to find more writings of ancient Lamanites and possibly some wandering Nephites. Finally, we arrived at the end of the trail. Here we let the boys climb until they were almost exhausted. We still had about a mile trek back to the car so we had to let them save the energy. We walked (Steph, myself and Porter that is, the other two got free chaffeur service) backed, spent but happy to have used a Saturday for something other than video game or couch potato practice. We can't wait for the next leg of the tour... sledding on the same Whitesands that the Decepticon Scorponok called home, running through the caves of Carlsbad and looking for evidence of aliens in Roswell.
t was about 70 degrees with a light breeze. We were quite a site with Porter leading the way, Zachary limping behind and Andrew taking 5 steps to our one. The 
2 1/2 mile hike seemed impossible, but we were determined. Luckily, mom had prepared some trail mix and filled up the H2O bottles. We didn't see much in the first little while and with the whining we were starting to get discouraged. Finally, we stopped for a rest and while the boys sat on a rock, I climbed up the volcanic rocks and located a wealth of Navajo graffiti. This peaked the boys' interest. Porter tapped into his uncle Mike's climbing abilities, Zachary forgot about his still too prevelant limp. Both of them starting climbin
g to locate the "rattlesnake", "lobo", "turtle" and "funny man" that dad had found. These sites brought new energy into the expedition. Now instead of the constant "I wanna go back to the car" requests we watched our oldest boys help each other climb up the rocks hungry to find more writings of ancient Lamanites and possibly some wandering Nephites. Finally, we arrived at the end of the trail. Here we let the boys climb until they were almost exhausted. We still had about a mile trek back to the car so we had to let them save the energy. We walked (Steph, myself and Porter that is, the other two got free chaffeur service) backed, spent but happy to have used a Saturday for something other than video game or couch potato practice. We can't wait for the next leg of the tour... sledding on the same Whitesands that the Decepticon Scorponok called home, running through the caves of Carlsbad and looking for evidence of aliens in Roswell.
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