Hiking

Saturday we decided to go hiking at Discovery Park. They have a lighthouse on the point and so we thought we would hike to the lighthouse. It's the last day of the season for the visiting center to be open. We packed a cooler full of yummy lunch and headed up to Seattle. We drove around for a while trying to figure out how to get to the lighthouse. Apparently, you have to hike there-no driving. We figured that would be just fine. Our boys have tons of energy! We had a nice little picnic lunch, packed our camera and a bottle of water and headed off. The main trail is a loop trail. About 3 miles all the way around. The lighthouse is off the trail about .5 miles. Only problem is that the signs are very poor and we had no idea which direction to head to get to the lighthouse. Needless to say we went the wrong direction. By the time we got to the sign that pointed us to the lighthouse, we had been hiking for 1 1/2 hours and over 2 miles. The kids were getting tired and the thought of adding another mile to our hike didn't appeal. The boys didn't mind missing the lighthouse though. They had a lot of fun just hiking through the woods, saying hello to the many dogs that passed us, and playing briefly in the sand when we got to the beachy part near the water.

We had a really great time as a family and have planned a couple of things for the near future. One, we are going back to Discovery Park when it gets a little cooler and we can wear the long pants and sneakers. The sandals and flip flops were no big deal, but we could go faster and cover more ground if we had sneakers. And two-we are going to take the kids on a lighthouse field trip down the coast (mainly by Portland area)after Travis gets his Executive promotion. Before we had kids, Travis and I went down to Astoria and some of those places and saw some beautiful lighthouses. We'll spend some time learning about them for school first and then head on down. Should be lots of fun!