In Pursuit of a Hike

It has been a whirlwind of activities this weekend.  We  hiked at Rock Bridge State Park , made a huge batch of  pesto , and attempted  canning pickles . We were still feeling like we needed to take advantage of the great weekend weather outdoors, so after the kids' nap on Sunday, we packed up to go on our second weekend hike to  Three Creeks Trails , one of our favorite trails in the area. It's only about 10 minutes from our house, and not many people use this entrance so we rarely see other people there. I blogged about our  hike there  this past spring, but someone had told us that if we headed in the opposite direction that we normally do, we would find a good swimming hole for the kids. Since swimming in the creek is on our summer   bucket list,   we decided to go exploring. Wow, that's a lot of hyperlinks for one paragraph. This creek usually isn't full of water so once we get down the trail to the creek, we just hike down the creek bed until we find a spot t

This weekend, we ventured out to  Rock Bridge State Park  for an afternoon of hiking. Jeremy and I went here several years ago, before kids, when we first moved to Missouri, but we have never been there with the kids. The advantage of hiking at this park: It is well maintained and has several points of interest. Disadvantage: It is a total tourist spot and there were tons of people. Not exactly our kind of rugged, middle of no-where trails, but still, the kids had a lot of fun. And what else would you expect on a sunny afternoon when its in the low 80's  in the middle of July? Of course everyone is going to come out to play. This is the "Rock Bridge" for which the park is named. While there are no trails leading right to it, there is a sign welcoming people to explore it. So of course we did.  Eli insisted on climbing over the fence all by himself. He got to this point and couldn't move. Finally he declared, "I'm stuck!" Finally, free of