Bike ride up Middle Canyon

Okay so the weather has finally been getting warmer and I have been loving it. I decided that Charlotte and I would take a bike ride up Middle Canyon, have some lunch and walk around. I wasn't sure if the gate would be open so I figured I could ride to the gate (which is basically uphill the whole way and pretty tiring) then walk my bike and let Charlotte walk up the road if the gate was still closed. Well it wasn't and I was pretty worn out. I'm in better shape than I used to be but that's a tough uphill battle and had been pushed at that point. I started riding past the gate but couldn't find a decent place to stop. I eventually had to just get off the bike and walk it. There were quite a few cars driving by so I kept Charlotte in the seat. Well she started to get antsy so I found a little spot with some fallen tree trunks. It looked like a dried river bed. It was gonna be a little steep to hike down but nothing bad. I didn't wanna leave my bike just off the road so I moved it down once I walked Charlotte down and got her to a safe spot. So we sat down and ate a little lunch then afterwards hiked around a bit. There wasn't a whole lot of area around there for her to walk so we decided to walk up the road more and see what we could find. As I was trying to lift the bike and carry it up this hill Charlotte started to climb up. I was afraid she was going to get up before I could and get into the road. So I hurried lifting the bike up but then slipped and hit my jaw on the bike. I've got a nice bruise and welt to show now. It looks like I got punched or something. Luckily not too painful though and I made it up before Charlotte. As we walked we found some rocks and some clearings for her to explore. Here are some of the pictures we took.

Charlotte just loves to be outside and to climb rocks. She has tons of scrapes on her legs to prove it. She is gonna become my hiking buddy.

 She loves to wander around and get away from me as you can see. We also found a couple bugs up there. Well, a couple kinds. The slug and then the box elder bugs. There were hundreds of the box elder bugs. They were everywhere! Charlotte kept pointing them out. I have never seen so many of them before. It was like an infestation. They kept landing on me.

I was able to set the camera on a rock and set the timer to grab a pic of me and my little girl. She had so much fun.

We were probably gone for about 2 1/2 hours. It was easier than I thought to get her back on the bike and ride home. Oh and we also saw some deer up there. The first group on the way up was like only 10 to 15 feet away in some trees. The others were just a couple that were grazing in a hay field on our way out. The ride home was great of course. All downhill! Love that. It was so nice but I think next time I won't try to ride as far up the canyon until I'm a little more conditioned. So tiring!