Hiking with Kids

Discovery Trail circles the campground with kid-friendly kiosks and steel insect sculptures.

We recently went camping at Diamond Campground in Utah with my sister and the kids. Despite the borrowed 10-man tent that took us an hour and a half to put up, storms constantly threatening, and raindrops that had us convinced someone was pacing around our tent all night--it was a great trip!

The trail around the campground led us to a tee pee, beaver's work, and a river just right for playing in.

Our host was very friendly to his only campers that night and in less than 24 hours he swung by our site on his little golf-cart, roller bladed past listening to Hotel California, yellow-bicycled by, and later under pretense of walking his dog.The next morning we packed up everything, leaving our tent to dry in the sun and made our way to a picnic spot, where our host incidentally, drove by honking his horn and waving...

En route to the trail head we took a wrong turn and encountered  a hairy marmot (a first!) and two trucks full of kenneled hounds about to go bear hunting (hopefully a last).

Fortunately, the trail is largely shaded, if not a bit precarious in spots.

In preparation for the first long hike our family had done in awhile forever, I visited Just Jeff's Hiking Page, a wealth of helpful information not typically found on hiking with kids. The hike was 4 miles round trip and I wanted our 10, 7, 4, and 2y/o to have a nice time and reach our destination--for once!

I secretly brought along some chocolate covered raisins, and at one of our breaks (we stopped about every 20-30 min) I threw them in a pile near the trail and, per Just Jeff's instructions, tried my best to casually point them out.

"Look at that scat! You know, you can tell a lot about an animal by the way its scat looks, its size, and...how it tastes."

But before I could amaze them all by eating it--Bowery Bird (10) with arms crossed 6 feet away looked down her nose at me and said, "I saw you touch it, it looks like chocolate covered raisins."
 I was crushed.
So perhaps our Nature Study has gone a little too well for fun and games of that sort...but while Mockingbird (7) scarfed it down, Kingfisher (5) still wouldn't touch it. "No. way."

A wall of one of the hot spring pools--complete with algae.

Eventually, after an hour and a half packing a 2 1/2 year old, we reached the end; hot springs! We stayed to splash in the lower springs that had been contained in several walled-off, surprisingly deep pools. There were several adults nearer the falls who were clothed (for now), but I didn't want to risk anything. My sister, who was looking forward to seeing me "explain that one" was sorely disappointed, I'm sure. The wind picked up and more rain seemed soon inevitable, so we prepared to leave sooner than expected.Then we looked up, and our host was waving hello as he hiked past...(still clothed).
"Wow, that's service." my sister joked, waiting for him to tell us our tent was dry.

 The return trip is when I took another cue from Just Jeff, I pulled out a scavenger hunt to do. The deal was, a prize would come out once every one's was finished. The older girls and Auntie worked together on questions like:

• Find every color of the rainbow (lots of flowers out made that possible--whew!)

• Name 3 stages of the water cycle around you.




• Find something becoming food for something else. (This one proved a challenge, but not for long. Mocking bird pulled out some animal crackers and we all watched as she theatrically consumed.)

Although the beautifully eaten guard rails would have sufficed.

 

• Something in the wild you can eat.
• Something living in it's habitat.
• A baby, a teenager, an adult organism.
• Find something poisonous.



Poison Ivy-past experience gives me the shivers just looking at it



The younger scavenger hunt I helped Kingfisher with had us find:

• A dark place and a sunshiny place. What lives there?
• Something camouflaged. (Spider) Why do you think it is camouflage.
• Something shiny.(The sun.)
• Something that reminds you of something else (A rock like a bird head & driftwood like a Pirate Ship.)
• A baby something--where might its parent be? (we saw robin eggs in a nest earlier)
• Something that was once alive, what happened to it? (a brown leaf and we talked about the seasons)
• Water in 3 places (Rain, waterfall, stream)
• Something camouflaged, why is it hiding? (spider--to get eaten)
• An insect, what is it doing? (ant--looking for food)

This started out as merely a way to kill time. But it was such a great conversation starter, it helped us open our eyes to things that might have gone overlooked, and was an effective way to gage what they really understood about the natural world and how it works. It was a fun common goal that we helped each other with.  The reward? More chocolate covered raisins  scat.

And as if we needed consolation for having to quickly leave the hot springs--or maybe just to prepare us for a doubly drenched tent in our absence, a double rainbow came into view as we pulled back into our campsite.

Wasatch Mountains in the background.

* I was honestly surprised at how little "extra" things we needed to entertain us or keep us motivated. I had forgotten how stimulating and gorgeous and rich a simple hike, in the right location (read: with a cool destination) can be.