Red Rock Overlook Hike in Pictures

I know I haven't written in nearly a week, and for that I am truly sorry.  I have tons and tons of ideas floating around in my head, many of which are in various stages of my writing process and sitting in Blogger waiting for me to get back at it.  I am also working on a guest post that will be showing up pretty soon...

But enough with the excuses!  I thought I would share with you, in pictures, why I have gotten little to no writing done today.  It was just too beautiful outside to be sitting inside with my laptop in front of me!  Hubby and I took the Crazies to Red Rock Overlook, a nearby park, for an afternoon hike and geocaching adventure.

Princess, styling & profiling in her very
"fashionable" hiking gear... she yelled "GEOCACHING"
just before I snapped this.  :)

And they're off!

Happy Campers, the Next Chapter

Greenbrier Lake

Last Friday after school, the Crazy Train rolled into Maryland's Greenbrier State Park for our second pop-up camper adventure.  We figured, what better way to spend a three-day weekend than in the woods?!  Although it was a somewhat whinier trip than our first, it seems that fun was had by all.  Even the cooler temperatures and drizzly Sunday couldn't spoil the fun for my ladies.

Small Steps

Princess and Birdie's Girl Scout troop had a hike after school today.  The goal was to complete their hiking badge requirements.  We met at a local park with nature trails for our adventure.  The trails were familiar to us, because my husband and I had taken the girls to this park to geocache in the past.  Both Princess and Birdie were looking forward to being "trail experts" on the hike.

Birdie decided to wear the deer hat I made her for today's big hike.  She thought she could deflect ticks (of which there were THOUSANDS) and try to attract wildlife at the same time.  She had high hopes that Bambi would mosey right up to her and start a conversation-- and I am sure she would have been more than happy to interpret "deer" so that the rest of the troop could follow along.  I am sad to report that no such wildlife encounter occurred.  Birdie and several of her troop sisters did, however, point out a dead vole, a scat deposit (lying suspiciously next to the vole, like some sort of nature-mob manifesto), several bugs and a caterpillar, lichen, tree fungi, and every other "cool piece of nature" she could find.  The dead vole and the animal poo, which we suspect may have been from a fox, were all Birdie could talk about on the drive home.  Welcome to my world, y'all.

Doesn't she look thrilled in this picture?  Birdie really is having a blast, she just needs a snack--
and the troop leader caught her just before she grinned.  (See the nifty hat I made?)

Geocaching

Yesterday was a beautiful spring day that absolutely could not be spent indoors.  Also, being the day after our all-day mac and cheese feast (aka Mac-stravaganza), we could not let inertia get the best of us, for fear that all those cheesy calories would take up residence in our pants.  My husband and I decided to take the girls geocaching at a local park near the Potomac.

What is geocaching, you ask?  I could spend hours of your time explaining this wonderful outdoor game, but in a nutshell, it's treasure hunting.  All around the world, people have hidden little treasure boxes for others to find.  The GPS coordinates of the boxes are posted online along with a few topographical clues.  You download this info and you have yourself a treasure hunt!   Are you going to end up with gold doubloons at the end of your trip?  I never have but I guess some idiot out there might leave something valuable in one of these caches.   The boxes are usually cleverly disguised waterproof containers that have a logbook, which you sign when you locate the cache, and some swag.  This swag-- or treasure, as my kids call it-- is very much like the treasure I mentioned in an earlier post about my Birdie's room.  You find a range of items, such as ancient Happy Meal toys, buttons, pins, magnets, business cards, costume jewelry, foreign coins, belly button lint.  It's all pretty much junk, but to Birdie and Princess it is worth hours of trekking around the forest (which makes this junk very valuable to me.)