A Fall Hike at the Arboretum

Last week we took advantage of a day with no plans to literally wander and take our time hiking at the Arboretum! It was a chilly day, but I really wanted to get some fresh air and get to the Arboretum before all the leaves were off the trees, so we bundled up, packed our backpacks (all three of them!) full of magnifying glasses, notebooks, snacks, and such. I also really wanted to walk around, not just play at the Children's Garden like we usually do. Last time we were there we drove around all the roads with the kids, making a note of fun places to get out. So this time, we did a Parking Lot Hop & Hike, checking out three different trails! It was so much fun! The kids loved being in control of the the car- telling me when to stop and when to keep going every time we came up to a new parking lot. Daniel chose the first two stops, Annabel chose the last stop. They had fun holding the map in the backseat, too. We had a great morning! We even saw a deer- he ran right past us, so close in fact, that Annabel wanted to be picked up because he made her nervous! The kids loved checking out logs (except for all the sticky burrs that stuck to our clothes- they didn't love that part, though it didn't stop us!), finding snack logs to sit on, looking around with their magnifying glasses. We didn't walk that far at each stop, but we did stop to look at a lot. Daniel really wanted to make notes in his notebook and he sounded out and wrote the words: moss (ms), deer (dr), yellow leaf (ylo lef), and big tree (bg te)- it was SO awesome! Annabel drew leaves in her notebook and had a ball doing that on several pages. We found the "treehouse tales" part of the Arboretum where there are all these houses to play in. The kids had a lot of fun playing hide and seek here among all the houses and big fat tree trunks; they are really good at hiding these days! Enjoy our fall Arboretum pictures!

This picture does not do this forest justice- it was literally glowing there with the sunlight filtered among the yellow leaves at the tree tops. So pretty.

Cool tree roots!

Checking out moss on log!

Look closely at the next two pictures and you'll see the deer!

The perfect little snack log!

My brave little hiker! Once she warms up to the place, she's off!

My new favorite picture of Daniel!

Daniel and Annabel wanted to take pictures of their yellow leaves for Daddy since he told them to find a yellow leaf.

Glowing yellow leaves!

Time to make some notes and eat some more snacks! Love Daniel's cowboy boots!

Such tall trees!



Silly kids! Daniel was saying "boo!" and he wanted Annabel to say "eek!"

Tree house fun!

Daniel hiding- and peeking out!

Cute picture of Annabel!

Annabel hiding- you can't see her though, she's so tiny!

Daniel found Annabel!

There was a very large pile of leaves there...we made sure not to mess it up too much since somebody worked so hard to do all that, but we really couldn't help ourselves at least getting into it once!