Lake Garda - Canyoning!!!

On Monday, June 15th, we spent the morning walking along Lake Garda and the town.  It was a beautiful morning!!!

The boys ready and raring to go!!!  Heading off on another adventure!!

Michael's scooter broke, so we were heading into town to see if we could find him a new one.  AJ was very nice and shared with Michael along the way!

AJ found some pull up bars and hanging like a monkey!

People sailing on the lake, it looks very peaceful!

This is a very different type of bird than I have seen before and you can see it is carrying a couple of babies on her back.

We went down to the two square where they were having their weekly flea market.  It was pretty cool, but really busy and it was really hot.  So what do you do when you are tired and hot?!?  Yep stop for ice cream, even if you haven't had lunch yet.  It is vacation though right?

Michael scootering away on AJ's scooter.  Thankfully after this we found a scooter for Michael and then they both were able to scooter back to our place.

After lunch we headed out to do some canyoning.  We headed farther north and then up.  It was a beautiful view of the lake!

The boys were so excited to go canyoning.  None of us have ever been before but we were all ready for the adventure!!!!

David and I waiting for our  guide and enjoying the view!

Now we are all geared up and ready to hike.  We have on full wet suits, the top not on yet because we have a 30 minute hike ahead of us, and helmets and harnesses.  The boys are ready!!!

The boys were the youngest by FAR, being they were the only kids on the trip.  There were 8 adults and the two boys.  We told them boys they had to keep up and they did such a great job keeping up on the hike!!  I was extremely impressed!

There were some really steep and not much of a trail for part of the way, but up the boys went.

And up some more.  It felt like we were climbing forever and in those wetsuits it did make it a lot harder.

We finally arrived at the top and finished suiting up.  Here we are, ready to go!!!!

Here is the group we went with, there were four people from Finland and then two from Germany.  The Finland people were so nice and friendly.  They were AMAZED at the boys and how well they did through the whole adventure especially after they found out their ages.

This was the first little slide to get us going.  Michael heading  down and already loving it!!!

Climbing over rocks, splashing through water, sliding down rocks and jumping off cliffs - what is there not to love about canyoning?!?

So this was the first big jump, AJ didn't get a good push off and he almost hit the rocks.  Both the guide and I were really nervous as he was going down, hence the later picture of him.

David ready to head down one of the bigger slides.  The guide wanted him to go first just to make sure for the children.

Michael up and ready to go!!!!

And I get to have some fun too!!!!

Here you can see that David is attached to a rope.  You actually get lowered down here because the pool isn't deep enough to jump and it is a long slide.

Look at Michael's face in this one, LOVE it!!!

I love AJ's smile - he was having so much fun!!!  I won really good mommy points for this one!

My turn!!!  Unfortunately my water camera broke at the beginning of the trip, so I was a little disappointed.  Luckily the guide was taking pictures for us.

Down David goes - this one took you left and right as you went down.

You can see Michael was going a little fast for his taste, so he put out his hands to try and slow down.

The crew at the end of the trip.  It was about a three hour trek and so much fun!!!  The boys asked me when we could do it again before we even made it back to the car.

While we were in the water it started raining on us, but didn't matter at all since we were already wet.  It had stopped raining when we were finished and we saw this beautiful rainbow!!  It was about an hour and a bit back to our place and one of the boys didn't make it awake.

AJ made it awake home and after dinner decided to try and beat David at cribbage.

This was Michael, he didn't even make it home and didn't eat dinner because he was so tired.  I have to say he had to work harder than all of us and we were hiking and on our feet for over four hours.  He was wiped out.  Thankfully from a lot of fun!!!!  It was awesome!!  I would have totally done it again if we had the time and so would have the rest of the family!!!