Believe You Can And You're Halfway There

rock cairns — Jackson stacking rocks in a huge rock valley off the trail in Guadalupe Mountains National Park

When we set out to explore all of the National Parks, I expected we would be doing a lot of hiking. Apparently I’m the only one with that mind-set, as it always seems to be a challenge to get my family excited about exploring the park on foot, along winding trails, sometimes climbing up into mountains. Perhaps if I didn’t use the word “hike”, it would go over better. Inevitably, every time we get halfway through our hike, a spark goes off that suddenly signals my kids to get a burst of energy and they finally get excited about our hike. The second half of our hikes is always more fun than the first. Maybe it’s that they have a better understanding of how much further we have to go, or perhaps they finally come to terms with the fact that hiking is just a way to explore, but that it doesn’t always have to be difficult.

hiking through Sedona — One of my favorite pictures of Griffin dancing his way back along the trail

Here are a few tips I’ve learned along the way.

Include them in the planning. For example, ask them: do you want to take this 2-mile hike to see waterfalls, or this 1.5 mile hike that’s steeper but we have better views of the mountains? Sometimes we pull up YouTube videos of other families hiking the same trails to get them excited and interested in what’s to come.
Once you have done a few hikes, I find it better to compare the upcoming hike with one they have already successfully completed. For example, this one is longer than the last one we did, but it’s not as steep.
Let them help pack the backpack and give them their own if they want one. I would think that carrying a backpack would make it harder on the kids, but they love carrying their own snacks and water, and they usually try to sneak in some extras like their pocket knife, some rope, a magnifying glass, etc. In most cases, we hardly need anything on our relatively short hikes, but they like feeling like they have some control. It’s rather nice that we each have our own pack, rather than one of us carrying water for everyone.
Make sure you’re wearing comfortable shoes and clothes. In this picture above, I had mentioned to my youngest that he should change and wear taller socks. He disagreed, but at the end of the hike, he was starting to get blisters. I try to encourage everyone to dress in comfortable layers so they can take off jackets or sweatshirts as they get hot. Comfortable footwear is key, too, but I always carry blister bandaids in our backpacks, just in case.
With a few exceptions, we usually try to find the best short hikes in a park, often trying a couple different locations rather than one long hike. This allows us to see different features of a park, and it allows us to break up hikes into more manageable chunks.
Any chance we get to allow the kids to “play” in the park or along a hike, it always results in less complaints and a better experience for all of us. They love climbing on rocks, so if a route describes some rock scramble or large rocks to climb on, that’s usually the trail I’ll recommend we try. It’s even more fun if you can reward them with a fun adventure when the hike is complete. At Lassen Volcanic, we went sledding after our snow-shoe trip was complete. It was a perfect reward.
Be careful not to get too hung up on finishing the hike and pushing too hard if it’s just not happening. It’s okay to ask everyone to stretch their limits, but at the end of the day, if no one is happy, it will ruin the beautiful view or the adventure you were seeking anyway.

It’s not how many miles you walk, but how many smiles you share.
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Throwing rocks into the Rio Grande — After a number of short hikes, the boys were excited to throw rocks into the Rio Grande

If Joshua Tree wasn’t already a favorite with it’s climbing opportunities, it was made even better when we came to the park the second day and found a few inches of snow covering everything in the park. We weren’t totally prepared for snow, but we made due with some hiking gloves and we put our socks and gloves in the sun to dry a little during lunchtime. We had a snowball fight, built snowmen, and had the privilege of seeing the beauty of Joshua Tree NP under a blanket of snow.