Pedestrian effort

On weekends that mommy works, my goal is generally to find us at least one major activity a day - sometimes it's errands, when the weather cooperates we'll try to go to the park, when it's pouring rain (more often than not in the last few days, though today was thankfully beautiful) we'll find some kind of indoor play area. Yesterday was fairly typical -- the always energy-burning fun of the local mall play area followed by distracting O from the evil/brilliantly positioned cupcake shop right across from it, and completed with a sushi lunch (the waiter there knows us so well that he always concludes the meal with "See you again [insert arbitrary day of the week]!"

With the weather back to sunny for today, after dropping off mommy, I decided it was time to get back outdoors while we could (and O agreed, he wanted to "go to a park we haven't been to before"). So we drove over to the rarely visited Kelsey Creek park and farm. After playing on their playground for a few minutes, we hiked up to the farm proper and got to visit with some sheep, chickens, roosters, bunnies (all grazing and/or drinking water, but ignoring us), and a couple of sleeping pigs. Then Z was hiking away from us and I saw some goats and a horse down the path, so I figured sure, we'll follow him and visit with those animals. Then he kept hiking and suddenly we were on a trail. Again, I figured it was probably some kind of loop through the park (I'd checked a few maps beforehand and saw a pair of less-than-one-mile loops), and Z did an awesome job of sounding out the trail signs to see where we should go next. Alas, O wasn't quite as into the hike as Z, frequently panting dramatically and saying he was getting too tired -- so there was a fair amount of piggy backing. Anyway, we were gradually ascending alongside the creek, and eventually Z read a sign that put us .1 miles from the road that bounds the park. I figured there would be a bench or something there and we'd just stop for a snack then walk back along the road until we could cut back in on another path. Nope -- no benches, and no more trails as we proceeded to walk the southern circumference of the park back to the entrance. I've roughly estimated that we did a 2.5 mile hike -- not bad for Z, and even O was down and walking a fair bit. What I'd forgotten was that this road is pretty much a high speed divided highway; thankfully there was a wide sidewalk for most of it, which provided immense entertainment for Z as he kept turning around to catch vehicles whizzing past. We eventually did just camp out in a shady spot on the sidewalk, where the boys proceeded to devour the entire stock of snacks contained by the backpack. Hiking is hard work! Anyway, an unexpected but all in all successful adventure; we returned to the park where the boys insisted on playing on the playground once more before we finally headed back to the car and then home for some chill time before mommy was done with work. Hooray for positive outdoor experiences, even accidental ones!