___: Summer Adventure: Horsethief Canyon

(I think they call this "puddle jumping" -- that water's only a couple feet deep).

We hiked to Horsethief Canyon today for the first time with my sister Michelle & her kids. Caught lots of frogs, and my boys jumped into some puddles. From the water level lines on the rocks we could tell it would be a great place to come in the Spring after a heavy rain -- but not nearly as much water as I'd prefer this time of year. The kids still had fun playing there for hours today. And I'd say all the little ones did surprisingly well on the hike back out, especially since it was almost all uphill on the way out.

Taking a rest under a manzanita tree.

Lovely large oak trees once you get down into the valley.

A tan Praying Mantis, to match the dry grasses.

We got to the water at the hottest part of the day -- so even though there wasn't as much water as I'd hoped,

we were grateful there was some water to cool off in.

Cool rocks!

The hike from the car to the water was mostly downhill, and took us a little over an hour with the little kids, and just a bit over 1.5 miles (I didn't start recording our time until we got a little ways down the trail).

Project Rescue Tadpoles: They decided to save the tadpoles that were stuck in a tiny sandy puddle and move them to the larger pool where they will have more of a chance of developing into frogs before the water all dries up.