We decided to be ambitious and attend Alpine with a 1.5 month old baby. We made it even more ambitious by extending it into an 11 day road trip and by leaving less than a week after Aaron and the older kids got home from the cruise.
I love a good itinerary, and I was proud of this one! I also found some printable passports for the kids for them to write reviews of all the places we visited. It was a fun addition and interesting to see how the kids differed from each other in what stops they liked best.
In the past, we have camped along the way on trips like this. We opted for more motels because of lil Heidi, and because I don't think we could have fit all of our camping supplies in our very filled minivan. We had several dinners and breakfasts lovingly prepared in Motel microwaves.
The first day of the trip was Felix's birthday! It's safe to say he had a stellar day. We started by opening a couple presents in the motel room, then headed to the Barefoot Trail.
This was a series of obstacles along the trail that are meant to be completed while barefoot. There was an orientation chat at the beginning that told us that we would be absorbing healing electrons through our bare feet and as we connected with the Earth. I'm not so sure about that, but it was a lot of fun! We were also instructed to count the hidden gnomes along the path.
At the beginning was this grid full of all sorts of stuff to step on.
I'm sold on the idea that outdoor free play is one of the most important thing that a lot of modern kids lack. It felt like we were doing things right while watching Isaac struggle across the wobbly wooden bridge.
Elliot's favorite part was "Washer Me Falls," which was a bunch of washers falling down a piece of rebar in a super satisfying way. I'm sad I didn't get a picture of it!
I think the kids could have played on the ziplines all day
I'm so grateful for these babies
One strange part was that Felix must have stepped on something pokey right before we got to this cute log snake. When we pointed it out to him, he burst into tears and said that the snake bit him. He was absolutely freaking out. We washed off his foot and looked all over for a splinter or wound, but couldn't see anything wrong with it. He kept limping and crying for about a half hour, and then was fine the rest of the day. We never did figure that one out.
After we completed the trail and washed off our very stimulated feed, we drove 20 minutes to Walnut Canyon National Monument, home of some awesome cliff dwelling ruins. The first order of business was eating the first of our many picnic lunches.
Our trashy little birthday boy
Heidi briefly woke up to enjoy the view!
I was planning on having us do a short, stroller compatible walk along the rim, but Elliot talked us into doing the much harder hike down into the canyon where you get to actually walk through the cliff dwellings. The stairs were pretty grueling, especially in the heat, and we had to keep a hand clamped on both Felix and Isaac at all times to keep them from falling off cliffs, but I'm glad we did it!
Native Americans built homes all along the canyon in spots where the softer limestone eroded. They would dig out some more, then build walls to close off the area and separate out a few rooms. The trail was awesome because you could walk right through several of the ruins, and see others on the other side of the canyon. 
It is INSANE thinking of people raising children while living on a literal cliff.
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