Johnson Joys: City of Rocks

We decided to venture a little further from home for a fun camping trip to City of Rocks.

They had some wagon replicas outside the visitors' center.

Driving into the area was really cool; tons of different rock formations all over... very majestic.

Shad had reserved our campsite over the phone, so we didn't know what to expect.

It ended up being one of the farthest sites away from everything else.

But it was also plenty big.

And had a great view out over the valley.

The boys cooking dinner.

After dinner we decided to hike out around our campsite for a little while.

Avery was really enjoying just walking all over the place.

If you've never taken your kids camping before, you should.

They can get as dirty as they want, and it doesn't matter, because you're camping.

At one point while lounging around, Shad was practicing his Rubix cube solving skills, which my brother taught him while they were visiting over the 4th of July. Drake showed us that he had been paying attention to Trent's lessons as well, and we had no idea.

Pioneers came through this area and left their mark on some of the rocks with axle grease from their wagon wheels. This particular rock had a lot of names on it.

And they're still there.

These were some cool birds' nests at the top of the rock.

This is me trying to get Avery to look at the camera.

This is our campsite at dusk.

Shad's parents joined us that night and it was fun to sit around the campfire and just talk.

This picture was taken from inside the car, very early in the morning, during one of the many times I was awake that night.

Graham had decided that sleeping in the tent, or rather sleeping at all, was not for him, so I brought him into the car (so everyone else could sleep), and we slept, kind of, in the front passenger seat for the night.

Come morning, when everyone else started waking up, I left him on the seat by himself, where he actually slept like this for a little while.

We couldn't have asked for a more beautiful day to be out in nature.

We had muffins and scrambled eggs for breakfast. The eggs were cooked inside a ziplock bag submerged in boiling water---it works great.

After breakfast, we spent the rest of our time hiking and driving and hiking at different spots.

This was a fun water pump.

We bought these backpacks at garage sales while we were in Colorado, and we're glad we did.

It's a lot easier to haul our kids around outdoors.

Especially for me... because I didn't (on this trip).

City of Rocks is one of the best places for rock climbers to go. The parks and recreation website says "about 700 routes have been developed to date." This website can tell you more. We saw plenty of climbers while we were there.