Force March Phillips

In my brilliance, I decided to take my playgroup hiking. We went to Catalina State Park yesterday. Of course, it was the hottest day of the spring so far (about 90. seriously). I was initially planning to do a short flat hike at the Romero Ruins, but the guy at the booth said to do the Canyon Loop since there was water still in some pools. So I looked at the map and thought, hey we can do this. When we started, I wasn't sure where the trail head was for our loop and chose the one closest to the parking lot. I had a feeling though that we should start at the other side of the loop but didn't act on it. First part of the hike was a steep uphill and then we went up hill, up hill, up hill. My kids were horrible but everyone else's were great. The twins wanted to be carried though and so I did the majority of the hike holding someone and my friend Jill (bless her heart) carried Kenna quite a bit. The hike took FOREVER. Laney was supposed to go to school but we didn't get back until 12:30 and school, which was a 20 minute drive away, started at 12:15. I felt terrible for making her miss school and boy was she mad. I'm pretty sure all of the other moms were hating me by the end of that hike too. I think we hiked about 2.5 miles. Secretly though I enjoyed the hike even with my whiney kids. We'll have to go again. But next time I'm bringing more supplies. Like trail mix. Because hiking is a lot more fun if there are M&Ms involved.