Hiking to the Mesa

On Friday, March 27 Don and Cayden went on a hike and camp out with Cayden's deacon's quorum.  They had to hike in to where they were camping so they had to haul in everything that they would need for the night.  They hiked to top of a mesa called Jumpback.  It was about a 2 mile hike in through sand and sagebrush and alot of hiking uphill.  Cayden did so good and carried his pack without complaint and it was quite heavy.  They cooked tinfoil dinners and made campfire that I could see from our neighborhood.  The next morning they had poptarts for breakfast and flew kites off the mesa.  Then they hiked back down to the trucks that were parked at the power line road where they started.  Caleb and Connor have hiked this mesa with their deacon's quorum.  It is a fun hike.  There were lots of lessons that several of the kids learned from this experience.  First that some of them hauled in stuff that was unneccesary like a 5lb bag of M and M's and some learned that they should have packed in more essential stuff like water.  We had several bottles of water that we had in the freezer and I loaded Don and Cayden up with several of them because the weather was quite warm.  One of the boys woke up the next morning and found a baby rattler under his sleeping mat.  Luckily he had a sleeping bag on top of the mat which is probably what protected him from getting bit.  On the way down the path was windey and steep and Don took the picture of one of the boys hanging on to Cayden's pack from behind and Don said that the young man (Luke Barlow) said "I've got you Cayden" as they worked their way down and Luke could see that Cayden was a little wobbly with his heavy pack and in the shifting sand.  Don used several of these lessons and thoughts in his talk that he had to give that next Sunday when we both had to speak for the Easter program.