Does anyone else's kids ask to cut coupons in the car as a form of entertainment? Both of mine do and they love it. It cracks us up.
We drove down on Saturday and stopped for dinner with our friends who live near the park. Amelia remembered Matthias from last year and talked about him nonstop on the way down. He has a new 4 week baby sister, Anita, who was also a main attraction of the evening.
High school friends with their oldests
Playing with Matthias' toys
The girls + Stephen
All the kids actually looking at the camera!
First morning hiking - doesn't everyone eat breakfast from hotel cups?
So excited to be wearing Mommy & Daddy's hats before hiking! They hadn't realized it was 30 degrees outside....
First hike of the morning - Austin actually made it about halfway before being put in the Ergo
I wish I had gotten a video of his giggles while dragging his feet through the leaves. He thought it was hysterical.
Pointing out trail markers
We quickly found them both big sticks and let the banging on everything begin.
A little brook
Our second trail for the day was the one that Amelia can ride her bike on (its handicap accessible). It's just under 1.5 miles and she rode just about the entire thing (with stops for photo taking and waiting on us slow hikers to catch up). We gave Austin a break and put him in the stroller. It stayed cold all day, not getting out of the 30's.
Amelia kept picking up interesting leaves and giving them to Austin. He was pretty thrilled with it.
And then she remembered her fascination with tree stumps.....
Just in case you think he was bored in the stroller
Before our trip, we talked to Amelia about carrying her own bag with her own water and whatever else she wanted to bring along. She decided that she wanted to bring her camera and binoculars with her, as well as a little Ziploc for anything interesting she wanted to gather. She did great carrying her bag the entire trip (we did let it ride in the stroller on this trail) but wanted to take photos of the oddest trees and leaves.
Daddy making fun of Amelia's tree stump obsession
We had some playground time before checking into our room in the park. I didn't get any photos of it but we brought the kids' headlamps and flashlights for the walk to/from the park restaurant and the kids thought it was awesome. The next morning Amelia and I caught a bit of the sunrise from the room deck.
A quick photo before starting our next day of hiking
This the "Big Meadows". Last year we had fun watching the park rangers manage a controlled burn. We had wanted to do more exploring this year so we started off Day 2 with letting the kids roam and lead us through the meadow. It has grasses and plants about as tall as them, with many small connected trails mowed through it, so they had fun deciding which direction to take us in.
It was still a cold day - but in the meadow with the sunshine and less wind, we think it hit the mid 40's.
The kids ended up taking us to a low area where a small creek ran through. They had fun with Daddy pointing out different things and then him hauling them over the creek to higher ground.
We had three deer run right beside us just moments before this photo.
There were a few random trees and large bushes in the meadow. We stopped for a snack and tree climbing here.
Stealing kisses while he's holding on
Using her binoculars
Climbing by herself the second time.
At this point we had been wandering for about an hour and Austin started whining, so we tossed him on Patrick's back and started hunting for trails that would take us up to the tree line at the back side of the meadow. We ended up finding the fire road and it was a quick exit out. The kids probably liked this the best and are still talking about it.
Just when you think they are done and are going to fall apart, they discover a set of rocks to climb on and spend the next 30 minutes giggling and climbing them over and over and over..... I kept telling Patrick that his boredom didn't matter and they were having fun. So we weren't going anywhere for a bit.
After lunch and wandering around the visitor's center, we opted to try a hike to a deserted mission. About 2 minutes in, Austin had konked out hard.
We stopped by the Appalachian Trail cabin on the way to the mission.
The 'mission' was smaller than we expected, but as dilapidated as described to us. Amelia had plenty of questions about it and she seemed to really enjoy the hike to it. Maybe because Austin was sleeping and she had our full attention, but she was chipper pretty much the entire couple of hours that we spent on this trail.
Austin woke up when we reached the mission but definitely was confused about where we were.
Taking photos of Daddy and Austin.
The hike back to the car was pretty interesting. We had a bear sighting which left us bellowing songs at the top of our lungs for half an hour. Amelia learned how to go potty in the woods and declared that "using mommy's leg is much better than a tree trunk". Patrick realized early on that the entire trek back to the car was going to be uphill, so that combined with our picking up our pace at the bear sighting had us all pretty out of breath. But it was a great afternoon.
Yes, that is our son running around barefoot in a motel bathroom. No judgment here folks.
We played a lot of Go Fish (with Old Maid cards) in the evenings. Amelia loves Go Fish and doesn't get bored of it.
On our last morning, we took the kids to Luray Caverns which is near Shenandoah. Amelia had gotten a book about caverns and caves some months ago from the library and she went through a phase of being obsessed. So we thought she would like to see one for herself. She was a bit frightened at first when we descended and then guide was going through all the "do not touch/run/etc" rules. But she quickly calmed and then had fun pointing out things to us. Austin kept walking around saying "under ground mama. under ground!" Photos in places like caves with moving children are really difficult to get, but we got a few to remember the visit.
Reflection of stalactites in a pond
They have an organ that a guy hooked up to solenoids and hammers on the tip of various stalactites and it played "A Mighty Fortress is Our God" just from the vibrations. It was pretty nifty.
A quick jaunt through their car and carriage museum. Since nothing was touchable, we flew through.
We ended our trip with a surprise lunch meeting with Delaney and Sawyer and their mama who recently moved to VA. I didn't take any photos but the kids were thrilled to see their friends and we spent an hour at a park where they played really hard. So hard that they both slept over 1.5 hours on the drive home. Success!
What a sweet time as a family. Traveling is work at this age, but oh so worth it. The kids have been pretending "hiking", "exploring" and "caves" nonstop since we've been home.
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