Cloudland Canyon--Friday

Friday morning I awoke to a pleasant surprise--it was 7am! Alex usually wakes up at 5:30/6 so the fact that I didn't wake up until 7 was very nice!

We had decided to go to the playground for a while then go hiking down to a couple of waterfalls today

We had breakfast and then hit the playground:




There is a short, but steep, trail to two waterfalls in the canyon. Matt had warned us that while it was only about 1/2 mile to the lower waterfall--the grade is about 40 degrees and that involves over 400 stairs. The first waterfall wasn't bad at all... the stairs weren't too bad, and we had a nice time relaxing near the waterfall.


The second waterfall was a different story. Hundreds of stairs, a steep grade, and lots of little kids isn't really the ideal situation! Lucky for me Caroline and Carter were among the few kids to walk the entire time and Alex was in a backpack carried by Matt. We stayed by the lower waterfall a long time--partly because it was so beautiful (thanks to some recent rain--a few weeks ago it was almost dry), and partly because we were so dreading the hike back up!





Caroline was the tour guide on the way back--she gave lots of interesting facts about the canyon, the rocks, surrounding vegetation, just about everything....later she told us she thought that some of it could be true and it was hard to be the tour guide because you had to make up so much stuff.


After the waterfall we ate lunch and tried to find a nearby trout farm to catch fish for dinner. We found the farm--unfortunately it had been long closed...so we stopped by the grocery store for the fish!

Matt and Caroline took advantage of the early return and went to Rock City to go hiking/bouldering...they had so much fun and got some great pictures