Feral Children are the Best

Nature Explorations hiked the Indian Joe Creek Trail at Sunol this week. The kids absolutely loved climbing around on the rocks at the talus caves.

I love seeing them all running wild.

These are some of our best days--outside, exploring, learning bits and pieces about the natural world around us, and connecting with friends.

The id guides are helpful when they find something cool (and often, the id apps are even better.)

But most of the time is spent just running, climbing, playing. . . and I'm good with that. Sometimes we nature journal when we get home, which is nice because it helps Peanut remember all the cool places we've gone. Other times, we just talk so much about whatever the coolest find of the day was that the location becomes knows as "that place with the fun rocks to climb" or "the one where we found the newts," As long as it keeps him wanting to get out there and explore, I think I'm doing my job.

 

Shelter in Place: Week Two Begins

My paranoia that the trails are going to close (which honestly has me in a bit of panic) led to us taking a hike first thing in the morning today. We went down to Sunol and tried a new trail, which turned out to be a winner--absolutely gorgeous and we only saw one family until the very end.

We are loving the outdoor time, as long as we can find spots without people.

Spring is in full force and we found so many beautiful wild flowers, lichen, and fungi. Now to identify everything--that'll be tomorrow's project.

Bean's been getting driving practice whenever we go out. She got to try the freeway today--I figure we better take advantage of this time when the freeways around here aren't crazy. She did great for the 1/2 mile she got to be on it :)

Then, it was time for Bug's first virtual piano lesson. It's not a format I think any of us would pick, but it's certainly better than nothing and we're working out the bugs to make it easier on his teacher.

Peanut hung out with his friends from park day. These virtual meetups are so funny--the under 10 crowd spends a lot of time being very silly.

We played around with some math puzzles,

and watched a couple episodes of Mister Rogers's Neighborhood, which was prompted by our family movie night when we watched A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood. Peanut is a fan. I wish I'd thought of pulling these out when he was little.

We ended the day with a full rainbow just before dinner

and evening entertainments with Peanut's puppet show (also inspired by Mister Roger's Neighborhood). His one liners were hilarious and he improvised a 20 minute show, including several original songs, that actually had a plot, even if it did get sidetracked a few times by the playdates the main character has with his new, and only, friend. I think we all gave it two thumbs up!

I'll just leave with a few more photos from our hike. I think nature therapy is the one thing that is keeping me calm through all of this. It's getting a little harder to not feel anxious and sad at times, but at least when I'm outside looking at this, I feel like the world is still a good place.

Worst Fieldtrip Ever

I knew planning a field trip for the day after a week-long vacation was a bad idea, but it was the only day the Education Train Ride from Sunol to Fremont still had tickets and I REALLY wanted to do this one with the kids. Originally, I'd wanted to go at the end of April so it might fit into the Transcontinental Railroad part of our history study, but I was willing to do it out of order so we could ride a local track and hear about how it tied in with the bigger railroad system in the U.S.

Too bad we couldn't actually hear any of the narration. I would estimate that approximately 1/2 of the people on board the train were preschoolers who had no interest in hearing anything about the history of trains in CA. And most of the other half were the adults riding with them who also had no interest in hearing anything or in keeping their kids quiet. I totally get that little kids love trains and a train ride is a fun field trip. I just wish the train people offered a couple different experiences, and the one labeled Education Train Ride was for older kids who actually wanted to learn. Not to mention, Bean and I both had really bad headaches by the time we got off from all the noise. It was totally not worth getting out of the house for the first morning back.

But there was some pretty scenery along the way, and the train itself was fun. Peanut, who is obsessed with Chuggington these days, was happy with the ride.

And we spent a few minutes walking around Sunol which was fun. Found this statue, of the former mayor. They elected a dog, which seems about right for this tiny, quirky little place.

The Hills Are Alive

All the rain we've had in CA has turned the hills green and after a couple clear days, they were dry enough for us to venture out for a little hiking. We went to Sunol Regional Wilderness about 30 minutes from where we live, and it was absolutely gorgeous!

 

And hiking is always more fun with friends. We were grateful for the Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday so we could have fellow adventurers along. Their mom and I used to play by (much smaller) creeks when we were kids.

The creek was really full, which didn't stop these two from wanting to climb out as far as they could on the rocks.

At least this one will stay back with me.

The explorers! 

We took a pretty flat, gravel trail to get to the waterfalls, but then headed back up the hills to get home which made for muddier, more difficult hiking, but beautiful views.

Love these hills.

And the kids climbed every rock they could.

While this one alternated between piggyback rides from me, and doing saucy poses whenever we stopped to wait for the other kids. He makes hiking a different experience, for sure. I've never had sore arms at the end of a hike before.

Glad we had a break in the storms so we could get out and enjoy a little nature.