A nice, leisurely walk in the park....

Or at least that's what I was envisioning. It wasn't a rough walk, but it was certainly a lot longer than what I was thinking. You see, I spent 2 1/2 hours raking the yard today and getting the leaves out to the curb. But it was such a beautiful day, I thought that a short little walk at one of the parks around here would be nice for Rebekah.

We went to a small offshoot of one of the bigger parks and started there. Shortly over 2 hours later, we finished our nature walk! Boy, was that a lot longer than I was thinking. I looked at the map before we started, but I wasn't exactly sure where we were so I wasn't sure what path to look at. So we just headed off. Well, about an hour into the walk, we passed a guy walking his dog. I asked him if this path led back to the pond where we started. Nope. It didn't loop. So, we finished that part of the trail then turned around and had to walk an hour back to the car.

Here are some pictures so you can join us on our...adventure...


Here we are at the start...a nice "little" walk awaits us...



Posing for pictures and having fun because we have plenty of time of all that stuff. I mean, how long can this walk be, right?



Rebekah throwing leaves up...leaf confetti!



Ok, we are ready to go, me and my little hiking buddy. (Notice the gravel path...how hard can this be?)




Hmmm....it seems the leaves have covered the path....



Which way to do we go? No one seems to know...



Oh look! Horse poo...We are following the horse trail! And for most of the walk, I had to keep my eyes on the path and not look around too much. The only way to see the path in spots was to look at the leaves and see where a small line of them had been disturbed by a horse walking through. It got a little tricky sometimes. Rebekah kept asking over and over, "Are we on the right path?"




AH! Horse tracks. The imprint of a horseshoe. We are going the right way.



Some gnarly vines around a tree....



Some of the vines made a great swings...



Some were a little more precarious, but for a picture, why not? I pulled on it some to see if would hold her weight....it did. She was safe....and having fun.



A nice little babbling stream we past. We went off the trail a little to see it. But later on the trail took us down to it. We had to stand very still to hear the stream going over the rocks. It was very peaceful. Other than that, Rebekah and I were tromping through the leaves so loud you could probably hear us 3 counties over....we are not very stealthy in leaves.



So, here is where the paths takes us to cross the stream. Now, we could have turned back here (close to an hour into the walk), but no...we kept going. If you are having trouble seeing the rocks that make the "bridge" to cross, well don't feel bad. There aren't many and they are little. On the way back, we ended up getting our feet wet.




Taking a little break at the top of a hill overlooking the stream down below..



Oh boy...we just found out that the path does not loop. We have to turn around and head back the same way. We are tired...



Aw...poor us. We have a long walk back...



We have to hurry so we don't get stuck in the woods at night! AH!!



Ok, we feel well rested and can head out and finish our walk. :-)



Rebekah took this picture of the stream through the trees.



WHOO-HOO! We made it!!



Here's the map! I found it AFTER our walk. We started at the star in the upper left and walked to the first power line thing on the map in the bottom right.


Granted...it wasn't THAT long of a walk, but when you are expecting a short walk and tired starting out, it seemed much worse...lol.

Now it's time for me to finish the housework that I put off to enjoy the beautiful day.
:-/