Before we went off on our own, Mr. Steve showed us their blackberry bushes that were just overflowing with ripe blackberries for us to pick. Nicholas loves picking his own fruits and vegetables so we spent a lot of time here.
When it was time to leave the blackberries and start our hike, Nicholas said matter-of-factly, "I'm not going" and just kept eating. Help! My child is obsessed with blackberries! We eventually caught up with the group and even brought some blackberries home to share with Daddy.
Our trail took us alongside part of McWhorter Creek. We enjoyed stopping for a while to watch the fish and turtles be-bopping through the water.
"Look, Mom! I caught another doodle bug!"
Our map told us that there was an active bee hive in a nearby tree. Nicholas pointed it out to me. It was really, really big but fortunately it was also really high in the tree. However, we all decided to quietly keep moving.
We found a little sitting area and for some reason several of the children, including my own, decided that the benches would be put to better use if they were turned upside down in order to be pretend pirate boats. How do they come up with these ideas from just looking at a simple bench?!
We saw this huge lizard who was well camoflaged on a tree.
We passed a heavily treed part of the creek and discovered that the creek looked like it was a solid bright green surface. Of course, my child has to be the one to run up to it to investigate. Everyone else stayed back and studied it from afar. I told Nicholas to step back from the edge because I didn't want to have to jump into the green muck to rescue him. A friend of mine told me, "Oh, I've got my camera ready for that picture! It would make for a great blog entry!" So many of my mommy friends have blogs. It's neat how well we can relate to each other!
Many of us eventually walked up to the edge of the creek to check out the green stuff. It is some kind of really neat plant life. Nicholas enjoyed watching a spider walk across it.
We continued our hike through the woods. Nicholas enjoyed taking turns being leader of the pack.
We made it to the Unnatural Trail. It is a designated part of the trail that contains 20 planted items that are "unnatural" to the woods such as a light bulb, shell, rubber caterpillar, fork, etc. Nicholas was quick to point out the unnatural pot at the entrance of the trail.
We saw lots of pretty wildflowers...
but the children were much more fascinated by their own not-so-sweet-smelling find...some fresh animal poop! I couldn't help but laugh at how amazed they were by this find!
The last part of the trail contains a special group of trees that have rope weaved around them to form a spider web game. Someone pretends to be the spider. The spider is blindfolded and stands in the center of the web. The other people quietly stand around the outside of the web. One person on the outside of the web shakes their rope and the spider has to figure out where his "prey" is simply by the vibrations from his web. What a great way to learn about how spiders catch their food! Nicholas enjoyed being the prey and said he was a moth. Then he got a chance to be the spider with a little help from Mrs. Deb.
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