First hike of the season: Sweetwater!

Kaleigh was on spring break this week.  I did not even realize they got a spring break in kindergarten.  Sadly, it did not correlate with Ashley's spring break, which meant that Kaleigh was going to spend much of her time at daycare.  Ashley did request a personal day on Monday so that the 3 of us could go on our first hike of the season.  Sweetwater Creek State Park.

Sweetwater may be my favorite hike in Georgia and it is only about 45 minutes from my house.  It is private, lots of woods, wildlife, rushing water, it has it all.  Kaleigh was allowed to pick which of the hikes we were going to go on, she chose the white trail.  The white trail is a little over 4 miles, her little 6 year old legs were going to be tired!

Before we left, the 3 of us all pitched in and made some sandwiches for our lunch in the woods.  I made the cilantro hummus, while Ashley made the wraps.  Kaleigh helped us both, she is awesome in the kitchen!  She even wrote our names of the wraps so that we were sure to get the right ones.  When Ashley was not looking, Kaleigh and I even slipped some chocolate covered raisins in the lunch bag!

We saw all sorts of wildlife; turtles, hawks, a heron, ducks, and even snakes.  In fact, we saw a King Snake.  We hiked a little off the trail because I knew of an old foundation that I had seen snake skins before.  This time, right as we jumped onto the foundation, there was a large King Snake checking us out.  It was over 3 feet long; although Kaleigh was a little scared we stood and watched it for a few minutes.  Then it began to look like it wanted us to leave, so we did.  Kaleigh was extremely brave and talked about the snake for the rest of the hike.  It was quite a great day.

What a 6 year old looks like on the ride home after a 4 mile hike: