Our Day Trip To The Ipala Volcano

Last Saturday fellow missionaries James and Joy invited many of us to join them for a trip up the volcano in Ipala to celebrate James' birthday.   Our family and the Byrd's were the only one's who could go.   There are two ways to get to the top of the volcano- do a two hour hike or drive.  You can easily guess which way we chose to get there ha ha.   We arrived that morning and began unloading the car.  

When we packed our car that morning and then looked at how full it was we laughed about it only being a day trip.  When you have kids it just adds extra baggage to all trips- long or short. 

We (our family) assumed we would be driving right up to the lake but found out when we arrived that there was a short hike uphill to reach it.  The others had been before but forgot to tell us.  We would have surely packed a little different if we had known.  We made several trips up and down that muddy, slippery hill to get things from the car.

Getting ready to pay our entrance fees

and right around the curve from there we saw water

The lake was very pretty 

The boys both had a fun time.  Here they are playing with their trucks.

After getting settled in we changed clothes and got in the water.

They had fun in the boat.

Poor Ben had just fallen underwater when I took this picture.  He was not happy. 

Afterwards we got ready for lunch. We took hot dogs and cooked them over the fire.  We also took marshmallows to roast, chips, and some chess squares.  Lunch was good.  

our crew under the pavilion

James' eating his birthday lunch

me and my sweet smiling Cruz after lunch (as you can tell by his dirty face)

We were told it can get windy up there so we took a kite and tried many times to fly it, but never got it going.   Cruz was obsessed with wanting to fly it.  I hope we'll get another chance to try it out someday.

Not long after lunch we all got sleepy but only the little ones actually napped.  Here are me and a sleeping Ben.

During that time the guys went swimming and snorkeling.

David and Josh

Josh and James

Before we left a few of us hiked up to the Mirador (lookout).  It was worth it.  The view of the lake from there was just beautiful!

Our family at the lookout on top of the Ipala volcano

We took a group photo before driving back home.  The Bentley's stayed to camp out and the rest of us left.  We were all tired, dirty, and sunburned but we had a very fun day.

Maybe we'll go back one day and actually camp out ourselves.  I am sure our boys would love that!