Pre-Mother’s Day Hike

We have some time conflicts on our hands, and I’m not sure how we’re going to resolve them. As you may have read, last week we were riding our bikes to a birthday party for JM when we ran into him on the road. He was going to the town hall, and I realized I got the dates wrong. The actual (surprise) party is this weekend. Unfortunately, this coincides with Mother’s Day, not to mention ultimate frisbee.

Now I was prepared to forsake everything else in favor of Mother’s Day, even though we love UF, and the kids were excited about the party, it’s a theme/costume party. I told the kids not to make a stink about it, it’s Mother’s Day and we don’t want to project to mom that her day isn’t important. Then again, we’re not sticklers for special days, as they’ve come to be known, and would rather focus on all the other days. Plus, we got her special flowers. In the end, we spoke with mom about it, and she said she was fine with the party and UF, and that maybe we could do something the day before, instead.

Say no more. We decided to do one of our favorite family warm weather activities, which is take a hike and have a picnic. We usually stop at the store en route, pick up bread and cheese and other favorite side dishes, not to mention dessert, and go for a hike. Since it was the first one of the season, we chose Mt. Tom, which is manageable but not a cake walk. We went to Mac’s, first, and stocked up.

The weather was perfect, mid-70s and breezy, and we were hitting the trail in the early evening, so it was cooler, but not cold. With the wind there were fewer mosquitoes, as well. The kids have gotten really good at hiking, they lead the way and never complain about being tired, which is a far cry from our early endeavors, where we would turn back or even better, have to carry them down. This time around, I had to work hard to keep up with them, they were going at a fairly good clip.

We got to the summit and set up our picnic. It’s so beautiful up there, and we got to see all sorts of wild life. We’ve seen porcupines and deer, and more birds than you can imagine. We saw a few hawks in a tree, which we startled and they took off. Since it’s still spring, the thrushes were singing like crazy, and their songs are magical.

We spent a good hour and a half munching and relaxing, and at some point the sun started to set. It’s tough hiking in the dark, so we decided to head down. It’s always an adventure going down because everything looks different and we seem to follow a different path down. It’s still a nice walk.

We got to the car just as darkness fell, and then headed home. The nice thing about hiking is you get a little walk in after your meal, which I think is a great thing. Hopefully we’ll get a lot more hikes in this spring/summer/fall.

Until the next time, thanks for reading, and happy Mother’s Day to all.