Berry Fun Weekend!

What a great weekend! The weather was perfect, the activities were great! Friday morning started out with a long walk to the 'choo choo train park' (the name we like to call it) clear over on third street! We went with my friend Ivy and her three kids: Taylor, Shay, and Maren. It was quite a walk for the little kiddos, but they had just as much fun seeing everything along the walk as they did playing at the park!
Saturday was a gorgeous day for a hike. We went south to Walen Island state park and hiked a loop around this island. The trail went along an estuary--where the coastal water has rivers/streams running into it. We saw neat shells, tiny crabs, and tiny holes all over the sand from little creatures! Ty collected rocks along the hike and carried them until he found a tiny pool of water in the middle of the estuary and threw the rocks in the water! Mara enjoyed a little hike in her backpack with her daddy but when she saw all the fun Ty was having collecting shells and other treasures she too wanted to explore! The hike continued along a path through a fern and everygreen forest and was covered with huckleberry bushes. Our kids love berries!! We picked a few but if you didn't pick the biggest or ripest they were 'spicy' as Ty liked to call them!
We finished our day adventure picking blackberries near Nate's work. Bushes and bushes of wild blackberries were everywhere. We were excited and fully prepared to pick three buckets worth, but a lot of the berries had already turned moldy so we had to be selective! Ty was so excited to pick blackberries, but he kept getting distracted and by the time he was through he only had a dozen or so blackberries in his little bucket! Mara ate out of the buckets as fast as we could pick so we ended up with not quite one bucket! Oh well, we made some mighty tasty blackberry ice-cream and blackberry cobbler tonight for dinner!