A Large Collection of Trees

The family had a welcome lazy day this past Sunday afternoon, and Larry's suggestion to fill the time up with a hike through the local state forest preserve turned out to be a fantastic idea.

First we napped. Every. One. Of. Us. Except Natalie.

Then I packed a picnic lunch complete with Double Stuf Oreos, and we headed to the preserve.

Believe it. There ARE INDEED woods in North Dakota. Not exactly the same as a good ol' Illinois forest, but a large collection of trees in a virtually treeless state nonetheless. The weather was perfection, with not a drop of humidity to dampen our spirits, and the only bugs that caused a nuisance were the hornets (?) that accumulated around us during our pre-hike picnic.

 

I doubt what we did could even remotely be called hiking. It was more a leisurely stroll on a very clear path. But the Heather was in wonderland, a place where every little rock and stick and nut needed to be picked up and handed to mommy for safekeeping.

 



And Natalie was in full blown Adventure Mode. Her three very important tasks?

(a) Looking out for Indians
(b) Finding The Treasure
(c) Listening for bears, or at least the Beast

She became very excited when Larry pointed out to her a curious looking "X marks the spot" pair of branches near our path at one point.

 

Confident that if she but climbed the boulder nearby she would spot the treasure, she took on her task with relish. Alas, no treasure was to be found. Observe the dejection in her posture.

 

 

 

After all that searching and hiking and beastly noise-making (on my part, being ever the one to try to scare the kids), we performed a thorough de-burring and tick search on each other,

 

 

then headed back from whence we came to lay out our treasures (Or, more precisely, the ones The Keeper of the Treasures During the Entire Walk, being me, decided to hold on to.).