Little House Girls

Ever since I bought the girls' Little House outfits, I've been wanting to take them along on this hike and get some pictures of them in their outfits. You will see in a second how much time has gone by since I purchased their outfits because Gracie has outgrown hers already! I am SO bummed with how these turned out though. I had planned to take my reflector with me and totally forgot it. It would've been a HUGE help. It was REALLY dark in this area & what light there was was really dappled and unappealing. I had to work with what I got though, but still. I'm really disappointed in my results and it's not like I can just go back and do them over. WAH! This is no easy place to get to. It's located in the National Park (which is practically our neighbor). Then you drive up a five mile long, single lane, bumpy dirt road to the trail head. From there, it's a 1.8 mile hike to get to this cabin. It's called "Michael's Cabin" and it's an actual homestead of one of the early pioneers to this area. It's really neat to step foot into history like that and think about the person that lived there. Here's what the cabin looks like on the inside, and horror of horrors- I used my flash! I had to- the light was extremely dim in there. A wide angle lens would've been very useful. The table where they (he?) ate his meals: His kitchen sink and window view: Another view out of this window: Cupboards: Ladder to loft above: Hunky hubby: And here are the girls' pictures: Standing in the light a bit more & a different conversion (more sepia): Nothing exciting, for sure. :( Then we hiked another half mile. We planned on hiking down to the river so Kenton could fish for a while. We then came across a second old homesteading cabin! The lighting was better here (or I should say it would have been, it was starting to get late) but the girls had already changed back into their regular clothes. I want to show this one. I took it as my family was assembling for a photo in front of the cabin- I was checking my settings. But this one shows the apple tree in front of the cabin. It is producing apples (you can see them up near the top of the roof), but look at the trunk! It's amazing that tree is still standing, let alone producing apples! Aqui esta mi familia. Now if we had turned around here & headed back, it would've made it an almost 5 mile hike. But we continued on to the river, probably another half a mile, where Kenton got to fish while the children played on the river bank. Alek sitting in the roots of a fallen tree: Gabe found an animal bone: The girls hopping around some rocks: It was getting a bit dark and nearing 6pm at this point, so we decided we'd better start heading back. We didn't go back the way we came, we hiked on a bit. Kenton saw what he thought looked like a great fishing spot, so he hiked down, with a nervous Josiah on his back, and cast out a few times: Moody Millie pouting because she wanted to hike down the steep cliff and be with her dad: Then they decided to throw rocks off the edge of the cliff while they were waiting: And even though it's getting late and getting dark, how can you not stop at a view like this!? Again, I wish I had a wide angle lens to get more of the scene in: That was the last picture I took. It was quarter after SIX and we still had to hike a couple of MILES back to our van! I think it was 8pm when we finally got back in the van! We began our hike at 3pm. And yes, I am SORE! It had to have been around 6 miles that we hiked, maybe more. It was fun though, I just wouldn't want to do it so late again.