Yay!!! It's almost spring time (well...in a couple of months or so) and in our house that means its time to get ready for the hiking season!! In the past our hikes have always been really low key short little treks out and back, usually to some waterfall. However, Bird, my oldest, has become uber fascinated with survival skills. What better way to teach him survival skills (and the rest of the family too) than to go on a few overnight backpacking trips! When I was a kid all we ever did was car camping and no hiking. My kiddos have both car camping and day hiking under their belts so this just seems like the next logical step. Of course I'm geeking out about it over here because I can just imagine how fun (and probably stressful) this will all be. So to gear up for the season we are going to start small, organize our gear, shake off our winter cobwebs and work on some fun projects.
We got started this last weekend by going for a short day hike out along Strawberry Island. There are several trails through this little patch of land that are pretty well maintained and are not very far from our house. Score! This really made for a perfect little trek out. While we were out there Bird decided to bring along some of his tracking books. We bought him several animal tracking books for Christmas because it never fails, every time we are out on a hike we come across tracks we can't identify. Not this time! Towards the end of our hike we stumbled across a print in the mud that at first looked like it could have been a dog (to my untrained eye). Checked the book...not a dog...Bird thought it might have been a cougar...checked...nope...William thought it could be a coyote print...checked and BINGO!! We took pictures and while its kinda hard to tell from them, we feel pretty good about our id. Overall it was a successful first trek out. Because of the weather here we wont be able to actually go backpacking until April or May but until then the short little day hikes should be good for brushing up on our skills.
Happy Trails,
Rachel B.
