Being Adventurous!

Sunday morning, as soon as I rolled over and woke up, the first thing I said to D (who was still half asleep) was "Hey, let's go to the beach or something today." He was stunned ( If you know me, you know that I am far from spontaneous when it comes to life. My brain functions on a timeline/itinerary type interface. If something on my daily mental itinerary is altered or changed on short notice, I have to completely rewire and mentally re-plan my timeline for the day, subsequently leaving me stressed and annoyed at the person or thing that changed my plan... control issues much? ) and half way mumbled something.

Then, baby A wandered into our room and we asked her what she wanted to do. She of course said the zoo, but we went to Wild Adventures the day before so we decided not to repeat that again so soon.

Dustin had the great  idea of going on a hike at Stephen Foster Park (in Hamilton County, FL).

I am from the beautiful mountains of Western North Carolina so there were always hiking places and state parks close and available. Heck, you could walk around my back yard and neighborhood and it could probably count as hiking.

Down here in the flat lands of South Georgia, hiking is not really interesting ( not interesting if you had been spoiled by the Appalachian Mountains as your backyard growing up) or as big of a tourist draw as I was used to. So we had to drive a little over an hour to get to a state park with hiking and stuff. The drive wasn't bad, but we took our adventurous streak a step further and did it sans GPS. Dustin had a general knowledge of the roads and where it was so it turned out fine, only a couple of u-turns.


We got there around 11am after a quick hiking snack food stock up stop. With our hiking gear, backpacks and puppy dog in tow, we headed out on an 8 mile loop. (ha! with a toddler and a puppy..like we would get 8 miles)

Addy was such a trooper, she hiked all by herself and never asked to be carried, she only wiped out about a 10 or 12 times, and each time, she quickly responded with a laugh or an "I'm okay", even when she fell up hill into a tree. She loved seeing all the caterpillars and lizards and hearing the birds, she wasn't even scared of the snake we saw!


 We were finally getting into the thick of the flat woods when we realized we were in the thick of woods in the thick of tick season. We were having to pull ticks off every couple minutes and with a dog and small child we knew we needed to get out there soon, we took an exit path and ended up in the craft square.


Addy got to use a loom with some guidance (which she was absolutely fascinated by...I see a crafting buddy in my near future! )  and we watched a potter at work and some other crafters.

Addy said to each crafter: "that is so neat, how you do that?"  They were all so excited to have someone so interested in what they did and they explained things on her level and they were just amazing. She never meets a stranger!

 We rounded out our trip with ice cream, a trip to the gift shop and some time on the play ground.  And even Ace buddy (our 1 year old Chocolate lab) enjoyed the slides with Addy.



We ended up hiking about 3ish miles total, and my baby A hiked the first mile and half without being carried at all! (she was only carried for time's sake, we had a snail's pace)



According to D, I didn't even complain very  much and was very "go-with-the-flow" the whole day. And it actually felt pretty nice not to have every last detail planned.



Going on a quick hike in flat land on a weekend doesn't sound too adventurous. But I hate the woods, bugs, snakes, and spontaneous changes in the course of my day or plans so this was a big adventure for our little family.