In Pursuit of a Hike

Last weekend, we initiated the 2016 hiking season. We had snow on the Wednesday before. Not much, but a ground covering at least. By Saturday and Sunday, most of the snow had melted and the weather slowly creeped into the 40 degree range. Perfect hiking weather! There was just enough snow on the ground to make it interesting, but sunny and bright enough for it to be refreshing to be outdoors. We hike all the time, which you probably know if you read this blog. We have our favorite spots for sure (Three Creeks, anyone?), but we are constantly scouting out new spots. We first stepped foot on this trail a couple of years ago when we were out for a drive and a dead ended up at this trail head. Excited to have found a new trail, we had to get out and see it. But because we had not intended on hiking that day, we weren't prepared for a long hike. If I remember correctly, I was still wearing dress shoes from school. We went in about 50 yards or so then turned around and made a men...

                        Our commitment to regular family hiking has been sorely neglected these past few months. We have a cue of about 10 new trails we'd like to explore, but between piano, soccer, birthday parties, Jeremy's college classes and my participation in almost every school committee, it just isn't happening. Time to do something about that. We got a tip about this place called the Devil's Backbone. It's less than a 15 minute drive from our house and there is no better time than mid-October to get the best views around. Check this out. This was the drive to the trail. How beautiful is that?! Maybe a spot for family pictures next year. My cute family before we start our hike.                                  So here's the thing about this trail. It's actually more of a ro...

For the third time this summer, we returned to  Three Creeks Conservation Area  for another hike. We did change it up a little bit this time. Normally, we go on the south trails which are closer to house, but we had recently been scouting out some trails on the northern side of the conservation area. We showed up to this trail a few days before our hike and walked in about 1/2 a mile just to check it out. We returned a few days later with all of our gear for this actual hike. The views were so beautiful on this side of the creeks and even the wildlife was different from the southern trails. There's always at least a little bit of discussion about who will be the "line leader." When Eli is the line leader, he likes to sing "a hiking we will go, a hiking we will go..." It's cute. The forest isn't very dense at this part so we got a good view of the squirrels stocking away their winter food. Anybody know what kind of tree this is? They were ever...