Congratulations to our family! We got out the door again!! It sure didn't look like it was going to happen today. I spent the morning thinking about how I really did not want to go outside today. It was simple too cold, and it wasn't worth it. I put another sweater on and starting baking. (yes, I'm proud of my Almond Cookies, http://thejoyofcleaneating.com/recipes/almond-flour-cookies). The boys worked in the dungeon (aka our unfinished basement). The afternoon started to disappear. We had a ton of rain last night, then it turned cold so everything was icy. But I did notice the steep street by our place had been salted...so we could actually go somewhere. And, I remembered the special place I had found on Thursday on a trail run, and figured the boys would enjoy putting a geocache there. All of a sudden, there was motivation to get out of the house on this cold winter day. It was only -6 today (feels like -13 in the wind). I packed up some snacks, we all bundled up, and Al salted our steep driveway. It was sometime after 3pm when we started our little hike at the Spider Lake Trails. It was very icy. It's not an overly pretty start with ATV tracks and clearcutting and power lines. Then we hit a spot where we had to cross a little stream. It didn't seem possible, and I certainly didn't want anyone with wet feet. We backtracked a bit and found another trail that seemed to reasonably take us around. We did have another water crossing on this trail too, but at least there was a tree that we could manoeuvre across on. The trail meandered a lot more than I expected and I did get surprisingly confused when we met up again with the original wider trail. It wasn't long before we were on another smaller fun trail. I had told the boys we were looking for an abandoned old car alongside the trail. It took much longer to get to it than I thought. I had done the trail from the other direction, mostly downhill - (not that it is very steep in this area, just a little bit more effort for those smaller legs), and I had been trail running it myself. We did eventually get to it, and hid the geocache that Zachary had been carrying. It was also a nice spot to have a snack of juice and cookies! Liam had also been carrying a geocache that he wanted to hide. Hubby and Liam took off back down the trail to find a spot. Zach wanted to be able to keep up with them, and I bet he'll make a big effort this summer with the big jacket and boots off. We found them as they were hiding Liam's geocache in a tree - winter friendly cache. Both boys had bright red cheeks and lots of energy as we headed down the path again. It was very icy on the main trail when we reached it, but the side trails were decent. We decided to risk taking the faster way back to the car as it was getting close to supper time, and therefore, had to face the water crossing that we deemed too tricky on the way in. We had to move out of the way of a couple of ATV'ers that we coming by right at the water crossing. They broke through the ice and made the crossing a little trickier, but still do-able. The boys were impressed by the ATVs, which always scares me a little bit (as obviously being a bit of a fanatic about hiking, I dearly hope the boys having been exposed to so much outdoors will look for quieter ways to enjoy it when they are older). Hubby went across the stream first, then Liam jumped to him. I managed to throw Zach to Hubby, then I made the crossing on my own in a slightly different spot that didn't seem all that difficult. No wet feet. YAY!! and a short walk/ skate to the car.
It ended up being another wonderful family day hike. I'm still not exactly sure how we did it. Still, I manage to find some guilt when everything does turn out, and we hadn't invited another family (or families) to join us. It is a challenge to deal with the child behavioral issues, logistics of a new trail or trail conditions, your gear, and the weather. And to top it off, we're usually pulling it off as a last minute decision (along with parental communication issues that are never my fault :). So it is perhaps reasonable and less stressful to do it on our own...at least sometimes.
Somehow, though, it is my dream to help more kids (families) get on the trails - leading by example and invitations to join us...and one day, being comfortable doing that in all seasons.
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