Too Quiet

Are your children well behaved? Are they too quiet? Do you miss hearing them cry and whine? I've discovered the answer to your problems. Take them on a hike.

I drove my family into the woods so we could find Riley Moore Falls. Getting to the falls requires a one mile hike in. Not a difficult hike. Going in, the hike was slightly downhill. Meredith was a little worried about bears. Maybe that's my fault. She asked if bears lived in these woods, and I answered honestly, "yes."

That's when the whining started. Once or twice I thought I heard something stomping around in the woods and I stopped to listen. Both times I did that, Meredith started crying. "Dad stopped because he heard a bear!"

Randy wasn't saying much. The hike took somewhere between 45 min to an hour. We came out of the woods, greeted by a very sandy beach.I had packed some towels in the backpack I was carrying so the kids could swim. When we got out there, they decided they didn't want to swim. They both played in the sand for a bit while I took pictures. A group of boys from a boys school came from upriver with two teachers. They climbed on the rocksand swam around for about thirty minutes. The teachers were pretty cool and told us there were some more sights upriver.

After they left, I finished taking my shots. On the way out, I stopped and found a geocache in the woods. Actually Cari found the location based on some clues, and I had to climb into the woods to retrieve it.

The hike back to the car was obviously a mile. Randy's legs were so tired he could hardly walk. I knew this because he reminded me every fifteen seconds. Somewhere around half way, he stopped complaining. Only because he complaints were hard to hear over Meredith's cries.

We actually did have a good time out there and it was a really cool waterfall. But I learned, once again, that if my kids are starting to behave and I miss that sound of crying and whining, take them for a hike.