Monday, November 28, 2011

Forest Friday

Rather than participate in Black Friday, we decided to head to the forest--Shelby Forest. Believe it or not, we'd never taken the kids there! We went once when Warren first moved here with our dog, but since we came home covered in ticks, we never went back. Warren's motorcycle gang goes through from time to time, but it was my nine mile run a few weeks ago that renewed my interest in hiking there.

The kids were somewhat unexcited about going--preferring instead to stay home and stare at their video games. The dogs, however, were thrilled from the get go.



Picard is actually smiling.



They kids really wanted to bring the cats, but I eventually talked them out of it! Once we arrived, the monkeys were thrilled. "This is awesome!" Satchel said. The grapevines were even bigger than the ones in the old forest.



We decided to do the 3 mile Woodland Trail, which you can see from this tree, gets a lot of action.



For whatever reason, the kids were fascinated by the small bridges.



And the broken bridges were even more fascinating!



Venturing down into the creek beds was a must.



I told Jiro to get in this picture for scale. I wanted to remember how big the tree roots were. However, now all I can see is how BIG my baby is!



Warren was enthralled by the new mushrooms...these felt like lamb ears.



And is was cool to see some new plants, like these horsetails.



Jiro took to "replanting them" all along the trail.



The best part for me? Holding Jiro's hand. It isn't too often that he wants to do that anymore.



Warren had to pay the monkeys a dollar each to convince them to put their hands in this hole.



At the half way point, Warren decided we should go off of the trail. It had gotten to be pretty rough on the kids due to the up and down, up and down. Oh, and I'd only brought about half as much water as he thought I had.



In our efforts to find a shortcut, we probably added a couple of miles to the hike. At least they were on flat terrain.



When we did finally get back to the car, we had one thing on our minds--burgers at the Shelby Forest General Store!

1 comment:

Colville Clan said...

Oh man, is your dog named after Captain Picard? My Jack is 2 & 1/2 but unless we're crossing a street he doesn't often want to hold my hand so I cherish the few times he instigates a hand hold. We have not been to Shelby Forest, we'll have to check it out!

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