Ridley Creek State Park Trail

As it turns out, I really like hiking.

This is one of those things that’s not surprising at all now that I pause to think about it. I have infinite stamina for walking and I enjoy nature the most when I’m passing through it at a pretty steady clip rather than enjoying it from a stationary position.

While E enjoys nature perhaps more than I do, she does not possess my unlimited stamina for walking. Thus, after a terrifically fun and challenging hike with the assembled Drexel crew last Memorial Day, I got it fixed in my head that I had to convince EV6 to enjoy hiking. I had positive reports from other parents that this was the sort of thing you could use to occupy a child’s time and attention at low cost. It seemed like a good tactic.

A not-quite-three-year-old is a bit too small for a hike of any substance, but that didn’t stop from from hyping EV6 up about hiking from the moment I returned from that trip last year. Any time anyone I vaguely knew uploaded a hiking picture I made sure EV6 saw it. We talked about how it would be challenging, and how it’s for bigger kids. We got a membership to Longwood Gardens to start getting used to traipsing around for hours outdoors.

Everything was proceeding as planned. I was about to have a hike-loving child at home with me for this Spring!

And then we did our little Darby Creek excursion the other day and I faced the cold, harsh light of reality: it’s unreasonable to expect such little legs to walk more than two miles in a day. EV6 is only a bit over half my height, so my two miles probably feels more like four miles to her! Whether it counts as two or four, that’s only about 60 to 90 minutes of hiking, all told. Not super satisfying, especially if it involved a long drive to get there.

Does that mean I resigned myself to a series of brief two mile hikes all Spring? NO MA’AM. I am nothing if not tenacious. [Read more…] about Spring Thing: Ridley Creek State Park Trail