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Consistency has proven to be the key for us going on hikes every week. This means that Thursday mornings are kept free for our hikes- we don’t schedule other activities then. But sometimes breaking up that consistency can be a good thing. Wednesday morning we were in town for some maintenance on the car, and the beautiful weather lured us outside. After days of rainy gloominess, warmish sunshine was very welcome.
So we seized the moment and moved our hike from Thursday morning to Wednesday morning.
We’ve had so much rain recently that the ground is just saturated. I didn’t feel like getting muddy, so we went to an old favorite: a nice wide trail that’s gravel or boardwalk the whole way. The trail switchbacks up a <small> mountain for two miles, ending at the parking lot for Monticello. So the surface is great, but it’s not just a jaunt in the park.
We stopped to play a few minutes in the giant piece of old tulip poplar that used to grace the grounds of Monticello. It’s hollow and has several interesting holes for the kids to explore, and it made for some great photo ops. I’m still working on my photography skills, so finding such a great location was the perfect opportunity to pull out my camera and see what I could do.
Because I brought my “fancy” camera and I don’t have a great bag for it that I can take hiking and because the trails are perfect for a stroller, I brought our Phil & Ted stroller for Ocean rather than strapping him to my back in the Boba carrier. This made it a lot easier to let him out to play and also made it easier to try shots from different positions that I wouldn’t be able to do with Ocean on my back.
The weather was beautiful: sunny and an unseasonably warm 66*. Perfect weather for a hike!
We didn’t hike all the way up this time because it was lunch time and we wanted to get home to eat. We hiked about 1.3 miles up, then turned around and did the same distance back to the car. The downhill trip is so much easier!
River spent the hike up the hill running back and forth, but he pooped out not long before we turned around. At that point he got in the stroller to ride back down the hill.
We had a great walk and I’m so glad we took advantage of the good weather. Thursday was also sunny, but it was colder and quite windy. Not nearly as conducive to a good hiking experience.
hike #4 of my 52 hike challenge, 16.49 total miles towards the 365 challenge
