Roc's Hike, March 2014

 

While hiking we came across a pile of bones.

Kids and their picnic lunch.

Emma and Porter came with me on my hike.

We found deer tracks!

Playing in the water on our way to the falls.

We also found dog tracks!

Little Illinois falls.

The calm before the fall!

This is how I knew that we had hiked long enough, Porter sat down and refused to hike anymore.  Although when we got into the car and he found out that we were going home he immediately wanted to hike some more.

During our exploration we found a cool cave to provide some needed shade. 

 

Roc is now working on his Bear in Cub Scouts.  Today we got multiple achievements and arrowhead points signed off including hiking and photography.  We also read some tall tales on the way up to the falls and during our lunch had a discussion about faith so we had a productive day in terms of scouting and a fun day for everyone.  We were all going to go and make it a fun family day but as we were getting ready to go Calvin decided to have an episode of vomiting and diarrhea which ruled him out of a day away from civilization especially going to a place with no bathtub.  So Stacie got the short straw and stayed home with Calvin (truth be told I don't think she was overly excited about going to the woods to go for a walk while trying to keep track of Porter and Calvin).  Early on in our exploration Roc discovered a pile of bones that he was fascinated with (hence the picture above).  I had a difficult time not making up a story about the bones to scare him but it was so early in the day I figured it would not be good to scare him or he may refuse to go on the rest of the hike. We ended up going on two hikes.  The first was  a mile and a half down to the Illinois River, we were following a trail to the falls but the trail had been washed away so we took the opportunity to play in the water instead.  We made a second attempt to get to the Little Illinois River Falls and we were rewarded with our effort by making it to the falls the only issue was it was very steep and rocky with cliffs so we had to admire from a distance.  If it would have been warmer we would have all loved to get into the water.  It was amazing that Porter walked 98% of the way without complaining.  We walked between 4 to 5 miles over rocks up and down hills and Porter lead us most of the way with his faithful walking stick at  his side.