Hiking season is back!

I love October.  I must hike every day.  I do all my usual trails, but this year, my friend Leslie said she discovered a new trail behind her sister's house.  She invited me and our friend Denise to hike it yesterday.  The most challenging part was getting from her sister's backyard down to the path.  It was a very steep, slightly muddy slope.  Thankfully someone had put a rope there.

Once we got to the bottom, we had to plow through some thick underbrush and cross a creek before we reached the path.  The path ended up on private property, and the saucy wench who lived there told us to get off her property, so we ended up on the street in East Peoria.  The only way back was to walk along the busy street until we got to the bike path.  It was a fun, new adventure!

Today my parents and I hiked at Forest Park.  We talked about Pimeteoui Trail, but decided to do Wake Robin Trail instead, since none of us had ever done that one before. But when we got there, we were met with this sign:

So we decided to just start with Deer Run Trail and see what happened.  Before we even got on the trail, we saw six deer and several wild turkeys.

Dad decided to do the Bee Trail while Mom and I did Deer Run.  When we got to Wake Robin, it was roped off and marked closed, but we ducked under the rope to see how far we could get.  There were some trees down over the trail, but nothing bad enough to stop us.  We went until the trail was so washed out that we couldn't even tell where it was supposed to be, decided we didn't want to get hopelessly lost in the woods, turned around, and went back to Deer Run.  When we got to the other end of Wake Robin, we crossed the ropes and decided to see how far we could get tackling it from this side.  We ended up making it all the way through.  Lots of ups and downs, turkeys, deer, squirrels, chipmunks. It was a good hike.