Cosumnes River: Second Attempt

In my world things don't happen the way I imagine they will. For example, a couple of weeks ago I took my family up to Placerville to check out a couple of climbing locations described in a rock climbing guidebook I have. In my mind, I visualized us following the directions to the places, going out to the rocks, setting up the anchors, and having a great time as a family, rock climbing. Well, that isn't exactly what happened. We tried to go to two places, both around Placerville. I thought that the first place was now private property and the second missing the anchors that the book promised. Well what actually happened was that I didn't really follow the directions in the book to the first place and ended up a half a mile away from the place it describes in the book. I found the second place, but discovered after arriving home that while the location was correct, I wasn't climbing the right rocks. The rocks I was climbing, and on which I was searching for the bolts to anchor my rope, were just to the right of the rocks that actually have the bolts. (I could actually see a couple of them when I looked at the pictures I had taken). Needless to say, I wanted to take another trip.

Yesterday, while we were getting ready to head out for Rachel's (first ever) race--The Apple Hill Blossom Festival Trail Run, I realized that we could make it a multi sport day since her run was near Placerville.

So after her run (and a good lunch), we headed for the place we had originally missed by 1/2 a mile and this time I really did follow the directions in the book and here's what we found:

A testament to the benefits of proper hydration--You can't cry when you're drinking. If you look carefully, you'll notice that daughter #1 is about ready for some water herself

This is the only place we saw people actually climbing

Here's a closer shot of their setup

It was beautiful and we had a good time but we didn't climb. There were a fair number of people out there and I've made it pretty clear in other posts how I feel about that, but I did have a lot of fun just checking the place out and taking pictures. So it didn't go the way I imagined it, but I pretty much knew I could count on that happening.