Mid Winter Hikes

We've had one of those weeks that has been fairly non-productive. Monday morning, Eli woke up with a fever, which had him out of school on Monday and Tuesday. Lex was home sick on Tuesday as well. Jeremy is recovering from a sprained back, and I have been working insane hours trying to keep up with things in the office. Thursday, we were all home because of an ice storm, but alas, did nothing productive, and instead opted to all stay in our pajamas and stay on the couch all day. We needed that. And then the weekend hit, and I looked around at all the housework that went undone over the week. It's a vicious cycle. But here I sit, another day of icy rain outside, meaning we'll be staying in once again, all the house work finally caught up, and I am finally able to get back to this blog to tell you about our hiking adventures last weekend.

Last weekend gave us a short reprieve from winter weather. Following the polar vortex, but before the ice storm, we were given 2 days of 50+ degree weather. I would have loved to have packed up and gone far away for a good 5 mile hike, but since Jeremy was out of commission with his sprained back, I decided to go it alone with the boys so we could take advantage of the weather. On Saturday, Eli and I did our favorite trail close to home, and on Sunday I took both boys to a trail by the river so we could watch the huge chunks of ice float by.

Hiking is typically a family activity for us. It's one of the things we just like doing altogether. But when he's not able to come, I love spending this time with just the boys.

As soon as we got on the trail, Eli asked if he could be in charge of pictures. He asked what he should take a picture of, and I told him to just find something he thought was pretty and take a picture of that.

So he took some pictures of the snow.

Ta da! It's art to Eli.

This was Saturday of last weekend, and there were still patches of snow throughout the woods. I was surprised to even see this much, because it had pretty much all melted in town.

The other thing we had to deal with was trails covered in ice. Or a combination of mud and ice. Whatever it was, it was messy and made this hike somewhat difficult. We had to walk off the trail for a large portion of this hike.

But we love the landscape on this trail, so it was totally worth it when the trail opened up into this meadow.

We found some ice to to play on.

And some animal tracks.

And a mile through mud, snow, and ice turned out to be just about enough for us, so we trekked back up the hill before we even reached the creek. We'll save the creek for a spring hike, I guess.

On Sunday, we went out for hike #2 of the weekend before the Superbowl Festivities began. This time Lex joined Eli and me, and we went to the river. Since it was the second day of 50 degree weather, we saw almost no snow left on the ground - just chunks of ice floating down the river.

This is a popular spot, so there were lots of people around this point of the river. Once we got on the trail though, we saw noone. Apparently, we are the only ones crazy enough to go traipsing through the mud for a winter hike.

See the Capitol building off in the distance? It's covered in scaffolding and tarps because of repairs and renovations.

Checking out the river.

And the perfect climbing log. Note the mud covered jacket and rain boots. This was a fun day to be outside.

Two bumps on a log.

The first part of this trail is where all the people are. It takes you past a couple of campsites (of course no one is there this time of year), and then into the woods, where it's a little more secluded.

The boys were fascinated by the ice. There were some patches that were perfectly round, and the boys kept speculating as to what could cause that.

Notice there is not a bit of snow.

At the very end of this trail, it turns and runs past a tributary. It's really cool to see the actual spot where this small creek pours into the river. On a nicer day, we would have been down on the sandy beach throwing rocks into the water, but on this day I was worried that if we climbed down the muddy embankment, we wouldn't be able to get back up. Either that, or we would all be covered head to toe in mud.

So we stayed on the trail and threw some rocks from there.

In this spot, the trail is flanked by two trees and the boys pretended we were going through a portal to another realm. Thank you Minecraft for keeping our hikes interesting.