Hiking with kids

Today I took my four kids hiking. Ok, so only two of them are really mine.  The other two are regular visitors.  My plan was to follow a trail that I know well which ends in a nice clearing and have a picnic there.  But when we get there, the oldest kid tells us that he knows of an old Indian grave in another part of the woods.  I'm a little hesitant to take four kids deep into unfamiliar woods with no cell phone, but it sounds interesting, so we head off into the woods, blazing our own trail, going up and down lots of steep slopes.

We never found the legendary grave, but we made up lots of interesting stories about it along the way.  Noah whipped out his pocket knife and whittled at some decaying wood.

We found a bridge to nowhere that we'd never seen before.

The kids found some feathers to stick in my hair, and we called to the Indians.

Finally, we ended up back at the parking lot.  The sun had come out, and we had all worked up a sweat, so we left our jackets in the van and headed down the trail to the picnic clearing.  When we got there, clouds covered the sun, and the wind picked up, so the picnic was a little chilly.

We sat under the water tower to block the wind.  One of the kids with an active imagination was very concerned about the water tower exploding and flooding the city, so most of our lunch conversation centered around what we would do if that happened. 

The youngest two were complaining about being cold, but the oldest two wanted to play baseball in the clearing, so I hiked back to the van to get jackets.  By the time I got back, the sun had come out, and it was warm again.  The boys had brought baseball gloves and a ball, but no bat.  That didn't deter their game; they just found a piece of wood and used it as a bat.

Noah remembered a book we read about Paul Bunyan and John Henry playing baseball, and Paul yanked a tree out of the ground to use as a bat.  He was laughing about that while whittling the handle of their stick-bat.

The oldest is a tough coach.  If the boys make a bad throw or let the ball roll between their legs, he makes them do pushups.

We started heading back through the woods to the parking lot.  The wind was blowing lots of leaves down on us like a ticker tape parade.

On the way back, we stopped briefly at the playground.

And we finished the adventure with a visit to the new baseball field being built.