Hiking--Henery Cowell St. Park

I was serious when I said I wanted to make hiking part of our regular activity regime. So for this hike I enlisted our friends, the Hirzels, to go with us on Labor Day. We met at Henery Cowell State Park in Felton, CA...about 1.5 hour drive south of SF. It's a huge, beautiful redwood forest. All the kids had so much fun climbing on the gigantic redwood trees!  Timo had the map and lead us through the 1 1/2 mile walk through the forest.  We even got to stop and talk to a few park rangers, ask questions and and learn that some of these trees were around when Jesus was born! 

See the sticks in their hands?  At a certain point we had limit Matthew and Timo on how many sticks and rocks they could carry.  Young finally came up with the rule that stick couldn't be any taller than you and only the number of rocks that can fit in your pocket.  And at the end, everything had to stay at the park.  The only things we could take out of the park were our pictures.

The park is right next to Roaring Camp Railroad, which was open and trains going all day, so we were able to walk over for our picnic lunch.  How exciting to see and hear all the trains go by while we ate.  Even though the kids were satisfied just watching the trains and climbing trees...we might have to work the train ride in for next year...

After lunch we took the river trail to try and see some bears!  Young was joking when he told the kids to stay together because there might be bears in the woods.  Just a reminder that we're dealing with 4 year olds and nothing is really a joke to them.  So Cameron was really disappointed that we didn't see a bear but we did find the river.

I like this picture..somehow Jen found herself watching all for kids by the water.  I'm not sure where I was but thankfully she was able to keep them all from fall in...the river bank was pretty steep.

The park is only about 20 mins from Santa Cruz so we decided to cap off our day with some ice cream at Marianne's.  It was packed!  We had to wait a while in line but it was well worth is.  A fun ending to our great day of hiking with friends!