Our New Passion

When John and I were in Alaska, one of the excursions we did was to take a 2 mile hike along an amazing trail. John and I instantly both fell in love with hiking at that point and knew it was something we wanted to do on a more regular basis. We loved the nature aspect of it combined with the physical challenge.

Since then, we haven't done much hiking but have planned to go to Starved Rock and explore our local forest preserve that is just down the street from us. Yesterday we "packed up" Anne and Winne and headed out to Hammel Woods. I discovered the nature trails at Hammel Woods a few weekends ago with Winnie and loved them. Although they are no where near challenging, just feeling like I was isolated and actually deep in nature felt so refreshing. So we strapped Anne on John's back in the Ergo and got Winnie on her retractable leash and headed off. We walked/"hiked" for about 30-45 minuted. It was so much fun! Anne did pretty awesome, only starting to fuss about halfway through but some songs and pointing out things we saw was able to pacify her until she could get down and walk the rest of the way. Winnie had a ball. She was super hyper the entire time and when we got home proceeded to pass out (I'm being almost literal here) on the couch for the next several hours. Again, this walk was not really challenging but the nature aspect was great. I am hoping we can get to Starved Rock in the next few weekends.

So last night, high on our family adventure, John and I staked out where we can go hiking together when we visit his family in KS in a few weeks. We found what seems to be a perfect spot! It's called Green Leaf State Park in Braggs, OK. It has 18 miles of hiking trails, and is considered a moderate hike-at times being easy and at times being advanced-because of elevation changes. John and I don't think there is anyway we can do all 18 miles of it, but we are hoping to maybe do half of that. So we'll see. We are super super excited! (Oh and this would be sans baby-she would spend that time with her grandparents.)