Julian Price Park Hike

We took a day and drove up to the Julian Price Park along the Blue Ridge Parkway. The day could not have been more perfect! We took the Boone Fork Trail, which was a 3-mile loop.

Partway into the hike there was a wide-open meadow with lots of wildflowers.

There were some snails and bugs that the kids stopped to investigate.

The creek was running a little high because of the recent rain, but that just made for some nice waterfalls.

Epic Hanging Rock Hike

While the big kids were away at MTYC, Rebecca and I took the littles on a hike in Hanging Rock State Park. 

There's a trail that going past two waterfalls, Hidden Falls and Window Falls. The trial keeps going after that, and since the hike to the falls was fairly short, we decided to keep going to see where it led. Little did we know...

 Of course the falls were gorgeous. 

  

  

There were lots of creeks to cross, so Rebecca and I would pop our shoes and socks off, load a little on our backs and carry them across. 

  

Along the way, we found several spots where there were dozens of little blue butterflies all gathered together. Not sure if they were getting water or just resting, but they were pretty.

 Eventually we reached the end of the trail: The Dan River. Unfortunately, there was only one way back... the way we came. 

 So off we went. 

  The girls kept up good spirits throughout the hike, not complaining at all.

 Fortunately, there were some places to rest.

 Eventually, we crossed all the creeks again and got close to the end. I ran on ahead to get the car started and be ready to load the kiddos while they rested a few more times before climbing the long set of steps back up.

 Our strong girls! Still happy, even at the end.

 My phone died just before I made it back, but it was a total of 9 miles that those girls hiked! 

 No wonder they were so exhausted on the ride home...

But they certainly woke up quickly enough when we stopped to get froyo! 

Lake Townsend Hike

We took advantage of a beautiful Friday afternoon to hike along Lake Townsend. 

 Olivia needed to do some orienteering for one of her AHG badges, so as we went along, she documented every turn we made, noting the number of steps and the direction we were facing after the turn. 

 A few weeks ago, we had some storms that knocked down some major trees. the root balls were just massive!

 We saw some evidence of the beavers that live along the lake somewhere.

 The littles loved the brides that we had to cross and wanted to pose on each and every one. 

 The downed trees that fell across the trail had been cleared, but the stumps and logs were still there. This gave us the opportunity for a little science lesson. We counted the rings on one tree and looked at the spacing between them. This tree was about 75 years old and we could clearly see years when the tree grew more than others.

 Like I said, there were a lot of trees down.

 We even found some little friends along the way.