A Walk in the Woods

One of the great things about living near friends and family is that there is always somewhere to go in-between conference sessions. Someone, somewhere is having a brunch and you can get your rowdy children out of the house. One of the things we don't love about living in Portland is that Sunday's can be LONG days. Church is over by noon and we have the rest of the afternoon to keep the kids happy. On Conference Sunday, we've discovered, we're on our own all day. So today, in between sessions, we decided to hit the Tualatin Hills Nature Park.

Amy discovered the TNHP in out lovely guide book "Oregon With Kids" and we thought we should check it out. It is about 5 min away from our house and is a 222 acre nature preserve with trails and woodland critters and lots of moss covered trees. That's something else I love about Oregon. Now I am no naturalist (tee-hee) but it is nice that you can make a right turn off the TV Highway (think the trashy part of State Street in SLC) drive 3 min and hit a 222 acre nature preserve. Can you imagine if there was a 222 acre nature preserve 3 min from state street in Murray?

So we headed out, with raincoats in tow (just in case.) The park was loverly, and this time of year the trees were mostly bare. I can't wait to go see it in the summer - or the fall!! There were winding trails with ferns growing along the sides and beautiful trees arched overhead. The birds were chirping and forged ahead, off the paved trail onto the more woodsy trails.
About 5 min in, we saw some sort of weird bug. Our first woodland critter! We pointed it out to the boys. Noel thought it was pretty cool, but Jonah declared, "We've gotta get out of this place. It is full of bugs." Well, yeah. We are in the woods. But we pressed on. Then Jonah told us he was scared because there was too much "stuff" around. Then Noel told us witches lived in these woods. (What??) But at this point we were in the middle of some trail with only occasional glimpses of some townhomes in the distance. Should we keep following the trail? Should we turn back? We had no idea.

At one point Noel was looking behind him while he walked and walked off the trail - right into a big patch of stinging nettle. I extracted him, and he was mostly fine (good thing he had long pants and long sleeves on) but we both had some creepy white bumps on our wrists and hands that did, in fact, sting. I am not sure if you can quite make them out in this photo, but they were there and creeped Amy out.

We finally made it back to the trail that led back to the entrance. The boys caught their second wind when they saw a squirrel that was not one bit afraid of people and was hoping for a handout. Can you see him sitting on the log?
I don't know about you, but I don't trust squirrels. They are basically big rats with fuzzy tails. This one was too cute for his own good and lunged at me a couple of times, presumably to get me to drop the big bag of Squirrel Munch-Ohs that he imagined I was holding. I squealed like a girl each time. We are city folks, my friends.

So we made it out. And then the kids, who had done a bit of complaining, didn't want to leave. Surprise. We'll be back. Even if the kids don't want to go. Come and visit and we'll take you there!!