Mom and Me Hike - Sourdough Trail

For this week's Mom and Me hike, we headed to the Sourdough Trail. I can't believe I had never been there before!! The trail is AMAZING and there are just miles and miles of interconnected trails to explore. The trails wind through the meadow, down into the woods, and along the Sourdough creek. The trails are level, and wide enough (in most places) for two strollers side by side, though you have to keep a lookout for runners and bikers if you go stroll side by side. It was absolutely beautiful, and even on a hot day it was nice because so much of the trail is in the shade. We could have hiked more in the shade, too, if we had chosen different paths to explore. After our hike we found a bench off the trail by the creek and ate lunch there. Beth was with me, so we sat on the bench while Caedmon and Ellie played. They watched the creek and tried swinging from a tree branch. It was great!

I definitely recommend wearing bug spray if you plan to spend much time down by the creek, but I don't know that it would be a problem every year. This year has been so wet here that our mosquitoes are out much heavier than they usually are! We even had bug troubles up at the M, and I don't ever remember mosquitoes being up there.

We will DEFINITELY do this hike again. And it's my official new fall-back hike if I can't think of a good place to go some week. I really enjoyed it!

Mom and Me Hike - Painted Hills Trail

This week we did the Painted Hills Trail for our Mom and Me hike. Erika joined us with Zoe and Juliana, and we, with our jogging strollers, headed down the trail.

Let's not do that again.

The trail was basically a deep rut with overgrown grass on either side. We fought and fought for a ways and then realized the trail wasn't going to get any better. We turned around.

We ended up just walking up a long drive next to the trail. It was uphill and was probably half a mile long, but was wide and even and easy to push a stroller on. It wasn't what I had in mind, but it was at least a good walk, and we got to follow it up with some play time at the Lewis and Clark course at the Museum of the Rockies. The girls really enjoyed that.

Next week we're heading to the Sourdough Trail, so I made sure to check it out the other day in order to avoid going through this again! It's a good trail and should be perfect.

Mom and Me Hikes

Last summer I headed up "Mom and Me" hikes for moms and small kids. It was a lot of fun, so we're doing it again this year. Yesterday was our first hike. We've got a good group that is interested in hiking this summer, so I think we'll have a good turnout most weeks. Unfortunately, most people emailed and said they couldn't make it this week, so I didn't know if anyone else would show up. I waited about 15 minutes and when no one else was there, I started hiking with Ellie on my own. I went for about 15 minutes and decided I wasn't too sure about being on a secluded, wooded trail in town by myself! Probably crazy, I know, but I decided to turn around and just hike Peet's Hill instead. When I got back to Peet's Hill there was a group of women with strollers and as I passed them I happened to catch someone's eye and recognized her! It was Molly Hannan, Leif's boss' wife. We said hi and she said they hike every Monday and yesterday it was Peet's Hill! So I hiked with them and it was a lot of fun! Lots of toddlers and Ellie got to get out of the stroller and hike most of the way! She did get tired and hungry after a while, so I put her back in the stroller and let her eat while I pushed her the rest of the way. All told we ended up walking about an hour and a half. Then I took Ellie over to Bogert Park to play for a bit while I ate some lunch and she got to play on the slides! It was a good way to start out the morning and start out the week! I'm looking forward to the rest of the hikes this summer. Hopefully we'll have people show up each week and the kids can get out and hike themselves some, too. It's good to get them out and active!