Final Hike

Friday morning we went on our final hike with Ellie, Kevin, and Abbey. We went to a place called Hidden Villa Farm. It's a non-profit farm and as you walk past the farm animals, you reach the bottom of the hills and there are tons of trails for hiking. This was our last hike and in my opinion, it's been one of the best hikes we've gone with the kids. We walked less than 2 miles, but we were able to appreciate the little things in nature.

After barely starting our hike, we found an abundance of butterflies. They were mostly purple/blue colored, but there were other beautiful colors. The kids also found a neat looking centipede. Abbey and I made this observation: the difference between adults and children. After seeing the centipede, Abbey and I were ready to move on. However, the children were observing, following where it was going, engaging in a conversation whether it was a mommy or a baby centipede. They were there for a while...and we say children don't have a long attention span. We also found some water bugs. Everything was just fascinating to them. They were keeping an eye out for whatever might be unusual or just new to them. I can't even mention the number of spider webs they saw and pointed out.

We were so lucky, on our we even found a tiny Santa Cruz Gartersnake. We watched it slither into its hole.

After hiking for a while, we decided to eat some lunch. The kids were so well behaved. They even let us take their photos, and asked us to take more photos of them. Now that's usual!

These guys were so entertained. We found a few banana slugs and they thought it was so neat.

On the way back from our hike, we found animal bones...the kids thought it was dinosaur bones...so cute. Oh, Arden also stepped over a snake that was crossing our path. I didn't see it, and Arden didn't notice, but Abbey saw and was very surprised. I think we were lucky the snake just wanted to get away and didn't try to attack.

What a bunch of silly geese! They were hitting the trees seeing they were going to knock down the trees...but they needed hammers and nails to do it, or just use a stick.



It was the perfect hike.