An Early Morning Hike

Zane’s on vacation and I’m home recuperating from breaking some bones. He comes down into my basement office around 6:30am and says, “Can I have some screen time?” I was just thinking about going for a walk or a hike so this was a golden opportunity for both of us: “Go put on some warm clothes, we’re going for a hike!”

It was a little chilly to start, upper 40’s or low 50’s, but once feet and bodies got moving everyone warmed up and was enjoying the beautiful Summer morning. Birds were out, bugs were still sleeping, and Raz found a few deer to chase as we hiked the trails.

Once on his hand the toad seemed quite content. Zane explained that there was a devil toad on one shoulder saying “stay, it’s nice and warm” while the angel toad on the other shoulder was yelling “run away!”.

I ran across one of these purple “masses” on a hike yesterday. Today we saw a whole bunch of them. On the surface they look like some kind of odd fungus growth, but if you get close enough (maybe put on reading glasses) you’ll see that it consists of thousand and thousands of tiny bugs! I looked them up when we got home and just as I expected they are snow fleas or “Springtails”. I usually see them on a warm day in the winter and never quite this congested. Zane wanted to scoop some up, but I talked him out of it.

We hiked five miles total, climbing at least one big hill. Towards the end Zane asked how far we’d gone (4.8 miles) and how long (2:12 hours) to which he replied “phew!” I pointed out that even after all of that he was still running around. He said “Oh” and ran up ahead to try and catch Raz.