Welcome to day 4 of our adventures! Today we packed up our campsite and started on our journey to Columbia, CA. It was an hour and a half drive, which was nice. This town is super small and is a historic town for mining gold. It is smaller than we expected and more ran down but was a neat experience to drive through. We stopped at a picnic site in Columbia to have sandwiches for lunch. The area was nice with bathrooms, picnic benches, along with big maple trees overhanging. We were able to have a nice little lunch and move on to our next destination. The kids weren’t too impressed with this town to get out and walk around. We were all pretty tired after all the walking and hiking we have done the past three days.

Travis had one of his friends suggest going to one of the natural bridges outside of Columbia – about ten minutes after the town. On the map, it looked pretty cool, and the kids could swim at this location, so they were in for it.  When we got there, we didn’t know what to expect, but the kids changed into swimsuits and loaded our camelpaks for the hike down. The walk was 1 mile down, but it was such a steep path. The way down was the simple part, let me tell you. I bet about now you can guess why I picked this title for the day. Haha! Once we got down the trail, the view was stunning yet again. The natural bridge was dripping water underneath, and people were swimming in the creek too. You were able to swim under the bridge to the other side. Lots of teens had tubes and just drifted to the other side. Caiden was the only brave one to get in and swim about halfway to the other side.

Now after all the beautiful views, swimming the kids enjoyed and crawdads we saw in the water… we now had to climb back up a mile hike. I am not in shape at all, and this proved it. I need to think about working out again because this hike was sad for Travis and I. It was not only steep but just about killed me. It was hot outside at about 90 degrees, but it felt like it was a million degrees climbing up that darn mountain. We made lots of stops in the shade and drank a ton of water from my pack, but we made it back to the truck. At this point, all of us just wanted to get to Pioneer, CA to our hotel. I wasn’t sure how this hotel was going to look either since the website looked a little sketchy when booking. I think we were all pleasantly surprised with our stay!

The hotel turned out to be super nice! The room was a decent size, had beautiful trees surrounding it and little porches for every single room. We got checked in and dragged in all our luggage and camping gear, then decided we needed to check out the pool after that long ass hike and camping the night before. The pool was well taken care of, and the views were terrific around us. I loved just watching the kids swim, chilling under the canopy under the shade and relaxing for once. This part was nice because we have been really on the go the last couple days. We got some time with Wifi to work on my blog, and the kids were able to chill on the Ipads for the evening too. We ate at a Mexican restaurant in Pioneer for dinner which was delicious! This day was a beautiful, easy day for us, and we all loved it. Stay tuned for our next adventure as we head to Lake Tahoe for the 4th of July!