Conquering the Fossil Gorge

Recently we had our nephew over for a sleep over. We thought it'd be the perfect opportunity to take everybody out to the fossil gorge at the Res.

There's nothing like climbing on big rocks to make the men in your life feel like...well...men! Case in point:
Another prime example of testosterone at work:

Just look at that puffed out chest - obviously proud to have conquered the rocks. I think they were getting in touch with their caveman selves -
Pleased as punch to be out in the wild. Now if they just would have had some fire or something to blow up, they'd be out there still.Don't get me wrong - boys can be tender too - there were also moments like these. Showing mom a fossil:

And there were sweet moments like this:
Looking for fish swimming under the rock they're standing on:

Poking at crawdads - (or lobsters as Noah called them):

And then there were puzzling moments - moments of 'what were you thinking' that are a daily occurrence in a household of boys. Can you guess what this is?
Yep, it's a footprint. Because "I didn't know it was mud." Now we're back to another tender moment - cousin helping to scrape mud off of a totally covered foot.
the solution - dip your scraping rocks in the water, and scrape some more. There was some talk about banging rocks together until they'd made really sharp scrapers - but we just didn't have that kind of time:
Then it was off to watch the water come through the dam - always impressive (pay no attention to my nephew's dirty hands - he'd just gotten done helping his cousin scrape mud - I'm pretty sure he washed his hands when we got home):

All my nephews are great with Max - and Max thinks they're hilarious:
More rock climbing. Look. Even big boys can get that 'I've conquered big rocks' gleam in their eye:


The end.