Mother's Day and the Intermittent Springs

The day before Mother's Day, we decided to start enjoying the great outdoors of Star Valley and hike up to the Intermittent Springs.  Dave and I hadn't been there for 8 years, but we thought it would be just right for our family.  After a LONG drive up the canyon, we finally reached. . . the parking lot.  It was nice to get out!  When we were at the Springs eight years ago, we'd taken a fun picture of all of the Jex family sitting on a picnic table near the river.  I wanted to recreate that picture, so I gathered the kids together.  Dave asked me to wait a minute and when he returned he had a camera bag that he'd purchased for my birthday a couple of years ago.  It's a camera bag intended for a nice SLR camera, something we'd been dreaming about owning for awhile but had never wanted to spend the money on.  Dave asked me to open it and lo and behold, there was a beautiful new Canon Rebel T3 and a card for Mother's Day!  Whoa. . .talk about unexpected and super-exciting!  I spent the rest of our hike snapping pictures (I probably took 200 that day) and having fun playing around with the new camera.  The kids were good sports and posed for picture after picture.  So, you'll have to bear with me as I will probably post way more pictures than before, simply because I'm loving picture-taking right now.  :)

Here we are sitting on the picnic table, reliving old memories!

On our way up the trail to the Intermittent Springs, we passed a family coming down.  The man was carrying a rifle and warned us that he'd seen mountain lion tracks so we needed to be cautious.  That took us a bit by surprise!

The springs were covered in snow, so we didn't end up going any closer than this.  Next time!

Mountain lion tracks?

 As we were standing looking up at the springs, Dave noticed the tracks the hiker warned us about.  They were pretty fresh and right on the trail.  To be honest, we got a bit spooked.  Suddenly, instead of enjoying our hike we were scanning the tops of the mountains looking to see if a cougar was stalking us, wanting to eat one of our little ones for lunch!  Boy, can imaginations go wild at the first hint of danger!  :)

I'm usually behind the camera, but I just had to get a shot with cute Joely at the Springs.

We didn't spend much time near the Springs once we saw the tracks.  We made our way back closer to the parking lot where we felt a little bit safer.  The kids had a blast throwing rocks into the river and exploring around the trail.  Emma found a rock with fossil prints (maybe?) on it.  And a snail shell.  She's definitely a rock collector!

Our secret agent rock thrower.

Even Joely found great fulfillment in throwing rocks.

A couple of Emma's treasures.

I love her happiness in this picture.  Usually she gives me very practiced, posed smiles when I pull the camera out.  This one was genuine.

I could look at this picture all day!

After a couple of hours, our tummies were growling and we decided to end the hiking/rock throwing experience and head to Pizza Hut. Carson had a Book It! certificate to use before it expired.  Over the next few days we did some more research and talked to some friends.  It was determined that those tracks were most likely. . .dog prints.  Yeah, we feel a bit stupid, but better to be safe than sorry, right?  And we're excited for another trip to the Springs in a few weeks when the snow is melted and the area is totally green.