Hiking in Flip Flops

This past Friday Carl was able to get off work a little early so we could go for a family outing to Ledges State Park. We hadn't been there in a few years and wanted to go while there were still some leaves left on the trees. We had forgotton that Ledges was flooded last year and maybe even before that and didn't realize that the road was closed pretty quickly once you entered the park. That being the case I didn't have the kids or us wear the best shoes for our outing. I was thinking we would just park down in the bottom of the park somewhere and let the kids run around and splash through the little streams that run across the road so I had them wear their sandals. We wore our sandals too which when we discovered we would need to walk quite a distance to get to where we wanted to go ended up not being the best choice of footwear but the kids did GREAT and we made it just fine. We ended up hiking our way through the trails down to the bottom. I made the kids stop for several pictures on the way. This one was while we were on the road before we started off on the trail. I love the way the light is showing through the trees.We also took a picnic supper for the kiddos to eat while we were there so that is the plastic bag Carl is carrying, again didn't think we'd be hiking:)Nevermind the pink wand, Callie found it in the dollar section at Target earlier in the day and it became her best friend for the day. She carried that thing all over! Even though we didn't plan the hike, it was gorgeous! The trees were beautiful and the weather was perfect(maybe even a little warm!)We had the kids pictures taken at school and in a studio for Callie but that didn't stop me from trying to get a few of each of them individually at Ledges as well. I succeeded to varying degrees as you can see from the pictures below:)The most treacherous part of our hike in our sandals probably came from these stone stairs. Great for good pictures but not so great for walking down in flip flops.I think the best part of the trip came when we got down from the trail and the kids discovered the water! That was definately one advantage to the weather being nice and warm.
After we played in the water a little bit we found a picnic table and ate our supper. I found the kids were pretty hungry and ate pretty much everything without complaint after our hike to get to the table, guess we should hike every night before supper. After we ate I tortured them into a few more pictures in front of the bridge. It is crazy to think how much the road is broken up and the place overgrown after all the flooding but at the same time it was nice as we didn't have to worry about cars and traffic at all with our little explorers.By the time we hiked back up the road to our van it was starting to get dark. The kids did great on the way back up and thought it was pretty fun to walk through all the fallen leaves on the road. Gabe took our picture in front of the Inspiration Point sign on our way back to the van.
We had such a great time and it was just awesome to be out in God's beautiful creation. We may have to go hiking again this weekend except this time not in flip flops.