Hiking at Hanging Rock

Today, we took our first "family hike" day trip. Jason and I went hiking last year and fell in love with it. We have been saying ever since then that we wanted to go back. Since last week was my spring break and this week starts the kids' spring break, this was the perfect day.

We visited the Hanging Rock State Park. If you have not been, I really suggest you go; it was wonderful. I'm going to have to ask forgiveness ahead of time - I fear I'm going to be a little long-winded with this. :)

We started with the Hanging Rock trail, which is 2.4 miles round trip and is rated as moderate in difficulty. Our thought was that we could go up that trail and be finished and ready to go to one of the waterfall areas for lunch - well! - what I didn't anticipate was the kids being fascinated with EVERYTHING! Sticks, rocks, dirt, sand, trees...EVERYTHING. It was so fun to watch. We ended up taking about 90 minutes to finish the trail. And we were ready for the end when it came! It was definitely hard - especially for little Kathryn with her shorter legs. But both kids were troopers and I am very proud of them for their effort today.

Next we followed the Lower Cascades Trail which ends at an amazing waterfall. It is only 6/10ths of a mile round trip and is rated as easy (although it was not what I would call "easy"). "The Cascade Creek tumbles 120 feet through a series of falls." It was breathtaking to come down the trail, not knowing what to expect, and have the landscape open up to this...AWEsome waterfall. We spent quite a while there, taking pictures, letting the kids splash in the water, just watching the water fall. There was only one negative there - Kathryn's foot slipped crossing the water and her foot got soaked. She panicked a little and, well, freaked out. It only lasted a minute while I reassured her it was only water and we had dry socks (but not shoes) for her in the car. She does not like discomfort of any kind...I am actually VERY surprised she liked hiking as much as she did.

Then we followed the Upper Cascades Trail to another waterfall, which is 4/10ths of a mile round trip and "easy". It was very pretty, but not as majestic as the Lower Cascades. AND, we ran into a teenage couple that was...well, not wanting to be disturbed. They ended up leaving shortly after we got there. I'm not quite sure why they chose that particular spot, but I'm glad they felt the need to leave when we arrived. :) We explored a bit and took some pictures and then moved on.

Finally, we went down the Window Falls/Hidden Falls trail, which is 1.2 miles round trip. By this point, we were exhausted, but not knowing when we will go back, I really did not want to miss anything. We were pretty tired, as I said, so we actually drove from the entrance to the Upper Cascades trail to the restrooms (halfway across the parking lot) to the Window Falls trail on the other side of the parking lot. I'm not proud of it - BUT I didn't want to waste any steps, not knowing what was coming up on our last trail....and I'm glad we did, because it took everything we had to make it back to our car! We didn't spend much time at these falls, because they were much busier than the others. We took our pictures and moved on; we only saw the Window falls from a distance. It was pretty crowded and we were pretty tired, so we just decided to call it a day instead of going all the way down the trail to the falls.

I am super-excited that our kids loved hiking. This is definitely something we plan to do regularly now that we know they can keep up and enjoy it. They were in wonderful spirits all the way to the end and Julian was pretty upset when it was time to leave. Kathryn was pooped and kept telling us how tired she was. I felt so bad - I was actually physically too tired to pick her up and carry her to the car. So she "sucked it up" and just kept walking until we got to the end. So strong!

What a wonderful day for our family. We are so tired, but it was SO worth it. I can't wait until we can take another hike together!