After the success of our Little Mt Si hike, Logan, Elijah and I headed out again. We picked out a very kid-friendly trail so that Elijah could spend a lot of time on his feet instead of in my pack. That worked for about half a mile and then he rode the rest of it. I didn’t push it because he seemed legitimately tired (he was falling asleep in my pack) but it worked out fine. The trail doesn’t have a lot of elevation gain but it is 8 miles round trip.
There isn’t a huge payoff but the walk is pretty. You go past an old lime kiln and then in another mile you hit the end of the trail at the edge of the river. We had lunch there and made our way back.
The trail itself is indeed kid friendly. It’s generally fairly wide and relatively smooth. There were, however, a lot of bushes and trees growing in from the side of the trail so you have to be careful not to smack people in the face behind you. It was especially tricky with a kid riding in a backpack.
I really enjoy these hikes but I’m struggling with how to keep Elijah engaged at this transition point. I don’t love hiking without a destination, but a lot of the destinations that are fun are also more than he can handle at this point. If you have suggestions of waterfalls, lakes, fire lookouts, etc that are only a mile or two round trip without a ton of elevation gain, please send them my way.
In addition to the pictures below, you can also see the hyperlapse that I posted on Instagram. (A hyperlapse is basically a video that is sped up and smoothed out so it kind of looks like you’re flying along without the normal video bumps caused by walking.)
Chalk Roads
Elijah and the neighbor kids enjoy riding their bikes along chalk roads which basically just consist of two parallel lines (or something resembling parallel depending on who draws them). When you’re hunched over holding chalk on the ground and walking backwards, it doesn’t take long to start thinking about ways to make it easier.
On Sunday, Elijah and I headed into the shop and whipped out a little gizmo which worked amazingly well. It’s a broom handle with a 26″ long straight board across the bottom. A little over an inch in from each side, we drilled a hole to hold one of his big pieces of chalk. Then I cut a little slice through the end of the board and through the hole so that a bolt with a wing nut and clamp it shut and squeeze the chalk. The cross piece is a scrap of mahogany. That’s overkill and extra fancy, but it was a scrap that probably would have ended up in the trash and I wanted a hardwood for the clamping part.
It was a bit of a random attempt and I think the clamping part could be improved, but it worked awesome! Elijah could even do it by himself.
We’re going to need more chalk.