We walked the main trail, the Arbor Hills Loop, which is 1.3 miles and travels through all three eco-regions. I like hiking on rustic dirt trails so I was a little disappointed to see that the trail was well-paved. However, there were a lot of dirt trails that branched off of the paved trail that we could have explored if I had been more prepared and had actually brought a map of the park so we wouldn't get lost. Just to be safe, I stuck with the paved trail for our first time out. But next time we'll get a little more adventurous.
There was a giant piece of rock that had been cut through to make the trail we were on. Nicholas enjoyed looking at and touching the different layers of rock. We talked about how long it took for all of those rock layers to form.
Nicholas loves the pocket field guides that I recently got at our library's used book sale. He brought the one on Insects and he wanted to stop on this rock and look through it.
As he was sitting still and quiet (what an unusual thing for Nicholas to do!) he noticed that he could hear a sound. He said, "That sounds like water!" He jumped off the rock and we followed the sound until we found a little stream with a waterfall and a neat bridge that crossed it.
We talked some about the phrase "fork in the road" and what it means. Nicholas enjoyed pointing out forks in our trail and he even saw a tree whose trunk "forked" into two large branches as it went up.
Here's Nicholas walking along the trail while singing and flipping through his Insect field guide. What a cute adventurer!
We found some giant seed pods. Nicholas said they were "humongous!" I didn't know he knew that word. We picked up several of them and had fun shaking them to hear the seeds rattle around inside. We were our own musical band. We got a few odd smiles from passerbys. They were just jealous that they didn't have any seed pods to shake too. We found the tree that the seed pods came from and looked at a bunch of them still hanging from the tree. We talked about how seed pods help to nourish and protect the growing seeds inside and that the pods also helps the seeds to catch a ride on the wind to eventually spread the seeds to farther areas.
Of course, every walk that a little boy goes on must involve picking up giant sticks!
This was a fun moment. Nicholas found a little grasshopper on our trail. He sat down to watch it then he started watching his own shadow. Here he is "touching" the grasshopper with his finger's shadow! How creative!
We had to take a break along our long walk and this neat rock bench was the perfect resting spot.
We started back on our walk and Nicholas found a giant tree that had fallen and was beginning to rot. He said, "Wow! That piece of wood could give you a giant long splinter!" Nearby the tree he was also looking at some plants. I told him to be careful of a vine on one of the trees because it could be poison ivy. He asked, "What are the other plants that have three leaves?" I didn't mention anything to him about three leaves. He recalled that on his own from his recent run-in with poison ivy. I'm always amazed at how incredible his memory is.
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