Make New Friends...

Today I chose a hike closer to MomMom, in hopes that she could join us. Alas, she was having work done at her house and couldn't come with us. Saddler's Woods is about 4 miles from her, so we stopped in there before and after.

At the Trail Head

The history of this place is pretty interesting (see info on the link), including a tree that may have been part of the Underground Railroad. We entered the trail on Hope Trail, and at the T intersection made a right to go toward the Wet Meadow area. A few minutes later, Brigid takes the Road Less Travelled:

See that purple triangle shape up the trail to the right? We followed her up that path, which spurred off to a steep hill. It's hard to see the degree of the slope in the picture, but I think it's probably at least 40*:

After a few moments of "I'm King of the Mooouuunntain!" and "I can see MomMom's HOUSE from here!!" we reversed course and went back to that T intersection. A group of 3 women with some young girls and babies were coming into the same area. They asked if we were the Girl Scouts, because they had seen the magnet on our van. As it turns out, the two older girls were Girl Scouts too! Coincidentally, I happened to be wearing my Rock the Mall t-shirt. Their girls had just been to the B.I.G. Celebration. And the mama of the Girl Scouts also has a family hiking blog! So, what do a group of Girl Scouts do when they run into other Girl Scouts they haven't met??

"Make new friends" of course!

We explored the area with them for a good while, happy to have "veterans" along to point out lots of cool things, like this tree growing like a trident:

Two of the ladies with sleepy wee little ones bid us goodbye, and the rest of our new friends stopped to eat lunch for a bit. We were planning on lunching with MomMom, so back into the woods we went, this time from the Doug Hefty trail (note: Read about him on the Saddler's Woods website, neat story!). The stream was calling them, and tried to claim someone's sneakers:

The rest of the time we just meandered around, enjoying the beautiful weather.

Emancipation Beech, a 300 year old tree

(read more about it on the website)

Overall, a nice day out, especially with the surprise of Making New Friends....











Awesomesauce!

So I was torturing myself tonight while doing some overtime by spending waaaay too much time looking at hiking blogs, websites, and finally doing some window shopping at REI. I decided to check out their class offerings, and lo and behold! I saw this class on Hiking With Kids! If the stars align and I can get my scheduled re-arranged a tad, I might be able to go this.

Two things I really enjoy: hiking and taking classes. I know, I know, I'm strange...

Wenonah Lake Trail

What a fun trail! It is ungodly hot and humid today with no breeze to speak of, so my original plans for doing several of the trails in the Wenonah Conservation Area were modified to just the Wenonah Lake Trail. It's 0.5mi, with the trail head at the Wenonah Lake parking lot. This is a fairly narrow trail, so single file is the order of the day if you're conscientious about protecting the trail. It is not a blazed trail, so by all means take a map (we did a double-back on one section when Mama was out voted about which trail was correct initially -- I was very, very good about not gloating =)...). Some of the trail markers are tricky to find, so yeah, take the map! Also, a lot of the "connectors" seem to be not accessible, e.g. the one shown for the Monongahela Brook Loop off Lenape Trail. It should run between two homes, but it doesn't look like there is any gap.

Our little one really liked all the foot bridges and how the trail meanders to and fro. The big girls liked how the trail was hilly -- up, down, up, down. Considering the oldest is a Hunger Games fan and the middle one sometimes pretends she lives in the Warrior Cats universe, this had big appeal! I like how I can modify the length of a hike by picking and choosing which sections to hike. One of the trail bridges was actually being repaired while we were there, and the girls were stoked when the volunteer told them they were the first to walk across the new bridge.

I forgot my camera, so mobile phone pics will have to do:

One of the foot bridges

The cutest 5yo hiker in the world!

Leading the way for a good portion, too!

No clue why this is so small, if you know why let me know!

We'll probably hike more of the Wenonah trails soon. Not sure what's on the agenda for next week yet....stay tuned!





Parvin Impromptou Trip (w/ photo!)

After having a totally sluggish morning (gosh I hate having allergies!), I decided to fight sloth by getting out on a trail again. We didn't have a "chase car" today, so I needed a loop or out-and-back trail. I have been to Parvin State Park before, to hike and swim, and I knew they had several loop trails. Once we got there, we looked over the trail map and decided to hike Parvin Lake Trail.

This turned out to be a great choice for my beginner companions, because they got a real, hands-on lesson in keeping an eye out for blazes and how to read a map. At one junction (at Second Landing, where the Nature Trail and the Long Trail come in) they needed to orient themselves to the map, investigate the signs and blazes, and chose which trail was the Parvin Lake Trail. As it turned out, apparently most people hike this trail from the fishing landing and go clockwise, based on how the mileage signs were oriented. We parked at the main parking area across the road from the beach and hiked counterclockwise. I assured them we weren't hiking it "wrong", we were merely having our mileage count down instead of accumulate LOL.

Photo Op on a Felled Tree





By and large we really enjoyed this hike, although toward the end it was less than happy-happy-joy-joy because someone needed to tinkle and was insisting on indoor plumbing <grr>, but once we found the composting latrine near the fishing landing her mood improved. Another valuable lesson learned: you should acquiesce when Mama tells you that you should at least try to go potty...

Tomorrow I'm going to recon Wenonah Lake Trail. I'm pretty sure that will be Friday's hike.

Logistics and the Gift of a Chase Car

One of the problems with a one-way hike, i.e. start at point A and end at point B is that unless you live at one of those points you need transportation to and from. Without kids, it is easily solved -- you and your hiking buddy meet at point B, shuffle one of your cars to point A, and off you go! At the end, you reverse everything and go on your merry way. Easy peasy lemon squeezy, as my 5yr would say.

Now add kids in. Kids with carseats. Kids who are too small to be left unsupervised at a trailhead. Hmmmm, trickier, huh?

Enter the chase car! One non-hiking-driver meets you at the trail end. If you are a solo adult with kids, he or she drops you off at point A and picks you up at point B. If more than one car was needed to get everyone to point A, then you'll have to do some shuffling and of said adults to get everyone back to the trail head. I figured this all out this morning while waiting for the 5yo's bus to arrive to take her to her last day of Kindergarten (sniff, sniff).

So, since today was one of those rare days when both my husband and I were off, I decided to get some dirt under the girls' shoes and hike part of the Elephant Swamp Trail. We had already hiked one part of it briefly a few weeks ago (the bit from the trail head at Elk Rd./CR 538 in Elk Twp.) for about 30min to get a feel for the markings, trail conditions, etc. The other day I did reconnaissance for the Rt 40 end of it, and was lucky enough to encounter a couple walking out at the end. They gave me a bit more info about the trail (thanks again anonymous hikers!) and suggested this last leg of the trail was best suited to new hikers.

After the girls all got home from The Last Day of School (cue: fanfare and cheers), we offered the plan to hike this leg and they were very excited. Over an hour later, with several changes of clothes, bathroom trips, and fussing about icky bug repellent, we were on our way! The Wonderful Husband dropped us off at the trail break on Monroeville Rd/CR 604, wished us well, and went on to wait for us at the trail end on Rt 40. Overall, it went better than I expected, especially on the whining front. This trail is very mixed age/ability friendly, because is it very straight and flat, giving you a long line of visibility. This part of it is also pretty wide, has a few benches along the way, and several imagination-prompting natural occurrences like a huge patch of ferns on one side of the trail, an area where several tall, straight-trunked trees grew close to the path together forming a natural "gateway" if you squint hard enough, and of course the swamps/ponds you walk past. Most of it is shaded, too -- important when you are as fair-skinned as we are. I wasn't planning on "vetting" every trail we hike, but I knew from reading on Traillink.com that some parts of this trail are more user friendly than others.

Unfortunately, I didn't think to take any photos, but there are some in the link of the trail above ;o). Just imagine a 5yo, a 7yo, and 11yo, and a 43yo meandering along in them...

Getting Started

This year I decided to try to help our girls' summer have more structure, fun, and outdoor time. Growing up in Girl Scouting, I logged more trail miles than I ever imagined (or kept track of), and I missed hiking. To be honest, I'm not really all that "in" to exercising. I'll run if I'm being chased by someone I'm fairly certain I can't hold my own against, or if there's a score involved (I did play softball for years), but otherwise I hate it. The whole gym scene? Not my thing. I have lots of friends and acquaintances who swear their lives are forever changed by Couch-to-5K or Crossfit, but I get nauseous just thinking about those things! But put a pack on my back, solid shoes or boots on my feet, and trail in front of me and I'm a very, very happy woman. There's something almost meditative about it for me. I also am really fond of yoga, but in my crazy busy life fitting in a yoga class sans kids is tricky tricky tricky. And practicing at home is a no-go between the dog and the kids unless I want to wake up at 5AM (which I really, REALLY don't).

So, my grand idea is a weekly hike with our kids. And just to make it more interesting, I've issued open invitations to friends and their kids too. In my more grandiose moments, I'm envisioning some Volksmarch kind of thing, but in reality it will probably just be a series of weekly hikes, occasionally accompanied by friends and their kids. Some of those hikes will be great, some will be complete duds, but hopefully when all is said and done we'll have had a great time overall.

I'm going to chronicle our hikes here, and when I remember I'll take pictures =). I've called this blog Hiking (Slowly) with Some Kids because a lot of the people involved will be novices, and if you've ever taken a walk with a child you know stopping every 10min to look at something "super duper uper schmuper cool!!!" is inevitable.