Local Exploration

A few Fridays ago the kids had the day off school.  Scott was working from home that day so the kids and I went out in the afternoon for a picnic so Scott could have some quiet work time.  It was an ambitious undertaking 'cause we went by foot to the park which is 1.5 miles away from our house.  Matthew and Anna rode bikes and the younger three walked.  I also brought the double jogger stroller for rides and to carry our picnic supplies.  Grant and Emma found a snail to look at here.  Getting to the park was slow going for the walkers but we made it.  The kids alternated getting rides and walking.

Here we are at the park enjoying our lunch.  The kids were sorry when the ice cream man showed up and I didn't have money with me for ice cream.  Matthew insisted that we use our picnic basket even though it was bulky and I had to bungee it to the stroller to get it to stay put.  He thought the picnic would be more authentic if we used a real picnic basket.

We ate our lunch and played on the toys for a little while then we went down by the creek.

The creek runs right by our house and there is a bike path along it that we followed to the park and that I run on several days a week.  There's a wide place near the park.  We threw rocks in and explored a little bit.

Where the road goes over the creek - Silva's Crossing.  This road flooded last winter when we got so much rain.  No danger of flooding this year.

Exploring among the eucalyptus.  

We had fun exploring then started home.  1 1/2 miles go by quickly when running.  When corralling five kids it is somewhat slower.  Here are Grant and John taking a break on the way home.  There was a lot of rock collecting and running mixed with being very tired.  We eventually made it home.  

Before I took the kids to the park on foot I had already gone for a six mile run in the morning, so I got lots of steps that day.  Phew!  A normal running day I might get around 14,000 steps.  A non-running day maybe 6000.  As a rough estimate I figure 2000 steps is about a mile.  The kids were tired that night.

Somewhere during our picnic Matthew went off road and came home with a whole family of spiky thorns stuck in his bike tires.  Big poky ones.  Next time he wanted to go riding we noticed them all and saw that both his tires were flat.  We removed all the pokers (not the scientific name) and I got some new tubes a few days later.  I endeavored to change his tires a few days later.  I only had a little trouble getting the front brakes to work right again.  I haven't changed many bike tires with gears on them I guess.  I got through it.  I have gotten several flat tires on the jogger stroller from those poky spike things.

I tried to look them up (here's a picture) and I think they might be called goat head thorns 

(aka puncture vine).  They are a nasty business.  No more bike off roading there.

Another day the kids and I went on an off road exploration (without bikes) of the creek.  Matthew went down in the creek bed last year with his school class.  There are lots of winding paths to explore.  Anna had a school project and stayed home with Scott and the other kids went on a walkabout. We walked on the bike path a little until we got to the offroad part.

Matthew was our pathfinder.  We didn't even encounter too much mud.

It has been really warm.  I think it was in the high 70s on this day.  It was a Sunday afternoon and lots of people were out barbecuing.  Pretty nice for January.

In one part we went down by the creek which is very small these days.

Here's our exploration crew!  It's nice to have such fun things to explore so close to home.  Getting home didn't take too long - we were less than a mile from home.  It was fun.