Hiking boots

Two weeks ago we decided, on a random Saturday, to go hiking. Jerry and I have discussed it often in the past and we've even gone to a local park to 'hike', it's more a walk with some hills. We weren't sure when we'd be able to take the boys, I mean Kaleb is only 3 years old, he's only been walking for 2 years. But we really wanted to get out of the house and not do the same things we always do like go to the zoo so we decided to give it a shot, what was to lose, if Kaleb or Zachary weren't able to do it we could find easy trails which we know they can handle and wait a year or two more for the intermediate and advanced trails.

So we drove about an hour and a half away to Red Rock Canyon State Park and did some light hiking. We really liked the park and enjoyed the hiking, the boys called it jungle hiking because the whole trail was through bamboo.




The next day we drove about two and a half hours to Quartz Mountain State Park, we did some more intense hiking and I decided we all needed hiking boots. We hiked to our first cave and Zachary kept asking if the giggly bears were going to come back to the cave. He also started with emphasizing everything by saying "soaking" like "soaking hot" or "soaking fun".



On Labor Day we went out and all got some hiking boots.


We broke in the hiking boots the next Saturday in the Wichita Mountains. Zachary kept asking if we were going to hunt witches, no amount of explaining the word Wichita convinced him that witches didn't live in those mountains. We started with a short walk at Medicine Park



...then we went into the wilderness area. Zachary was sure the black marks on the road (in the next picture) were witch tracks.


We conquered our first mountain, Elk Mountain, all 2270 feet of it. Kaleb hiked up himself (with very little help from anyone), we impressed some other hikers when we told them Kaleb was only 3.






1/2 way up the mountain



Top of Elk Mountain!


On the way back out of the Wildlife Preserve we found a Buffalo on the side of the road...no fences or gates, free roaming Buffalo and prairie dogs. We also saw some long horns but some noisy motorcycles scared them away before I could get my picture.