In Pursuit of a Hike

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 d...

Our first hike of the New Year is in the books! Every year on New Year's Day, I think about what the year will bring in the way of hiking adventures. I love looking at Missouri State Park maps and making hiking goals. The boys have been wanting to get back to  Ha Ha Tonka State Park  ever since we hiked there last fall . We loved the views, the trail options, and the geological features. We couldn't wait to get back here to check out some more trails. Hello 60 degree weather in early January! Hiking trails, here we come. One of the things we love about Ha Ha Tonka is that there are tons of options of trails. You can do short loops, medium loops, long loops... You can do combination of loops without overlapping trails, and every trail is easily accessible from one of a handful of parking lots. On only our second visit, we felt like we had a pretty good layout of the entire park and could easily navigate the trail loops. So for starters, we hit the Acorn Trail. ...