The one with all the rocks

Ouch.

That would be the noise my rear-end makes every time I take a step.  (Rear-ends make that noise, you ask?  Yes.  Today, that is the noise mine makes.)

Because yesterday, we road-tripped it down to Colorado Springs and the Garden of the Gods, which, if you haven't visited in a while, looks something like this:

Pretty awesome!  And free to visit, to boot!

Our day began with a little bit of hamming it up for the camera.  And even though it's not exactly time for her teddy bear photo, I couldn't help but smile when I saw this.

I was a bit apprehensive about the drive, since it's close to two hours from our house.  I knew that by the time we got there it would be nearly nap time.  Fortunately, Leah played it cool while in the car.

This is how Leah road-trips it.  Looking mightily like her daddy, I might add.

I packed lunch and took a nice big blanket, hoping that she would settle down and take a nap at a park after a nice picnic.  We accomplished a lot at that park:

...but unfortunately, none of it included napping.

Instead, she took a short nap in the car while daddy and I drove through at Dairy Queen.  So in the end, it worked out for everyone!

When we arrived at Garden of the Gods, I had anticipated hiking trails.  I thought we would be able to load Leah up in the backpack.

We learned an important lesson: our backpack hasn't grown since last summer.  Seems like a no-brainer, right?  Except that, Leah has grown since last summer... so much so that she barely fits into this thing any longer.  I think we'll probably get one more use out of it this year, and then it will have to be packed away in hopeful anticipation of a new little occupant one day. 

But, we did get some good hiking in.  That is, we took a quick hike around, mostly for the purposes of getting family pictures.  We tried...

And tried again...

And finally had to enlist the help of a passer by.

At this point, we decided to hike back to the car to get the stroller, largely because I was worried the backpack was cutting off the circulation in Leah's legs.  And that's where the fun began, what with off-roading and looking for trails, and pushing the stroller up some pretty steep hills in the dirt. 

Can I just mention: thank goodness our stroller can do all of those things!  It wins the award for durability after the tests we put it through yesterday. 

And, for pushing the stroller plus child through all of those adventures, Mommy wins the award for buns of steel. 

(Ouch.)