On the Saturday before Mother's Day, I wanted to go hiking. Jared like the idea, too. Northwest Arkansas is beautiful, and we've heard there are a lot of good trails in the area. However, we didn't want to pick anything too daunting since we weren't sure how the girls would do. With a little internet research, we decided that the Van Winkle Trail could be good for us. So we headed out.
At the start of the trail
We had to pass through a tunnel that went under the road.
The trail went through the Van Winkle Hollow. Before and after the Civil War, it was an important area, with a saw mill, blacksmith, and other facilities. Van Winkle's home was here, along with other homes for the workers. Sometime after the Civil War, someone bought the home and dismantled it. The hand-made bricks from the chimney and steps, along with all the lumber, was used to make a church and other buildings in what is now a village that depicts life in Early America. Perhaps we'll go visit that village sometime.
Marking the site of the Van Winkle Home
Rachel by the Stream
Daddy joined us.
I didn't really realize that there was so much history associated with the trail when we picked it. But I enjoyed learning some things. Part of the trail lines up with the Van Winkle Mill Road. This road was used by both armies during the Civil War. It was cool imagining the armies walking through this area. When the Confederates retreated from the battle at Pea Ridge, they came through the area and used the mill to grind corn to feed the soldiers. Pretty neat.
Rachel found a pretty flower
The girls on the steps that led up to the garden back in the day.
When we were almost back to the car, we saw this little guy on the path. We didn't know whether he was poisonous at the time, so we were cautious. It turns out that he wasn't. Something else that I learned later from a friend who runs in the State Parks often is that it isn't uncommon to find 4 ft rattlesnakes in this area. I am very glad that we didn't come across any. We will probably take Buddy with us in the future to alert us of any snakes and hopefully scare them away from the trail. (My friend always runs with her dog; she almost stepped on a copperhead once while running. Yikes!)
Little Snake
Although it was closer to snack time, we ate our lunches that we had packed. There were some picnic tables off from the parking lot.
Daddy being a monkey with banana in his mouth.
We took some pictures of our beautiful girls.
There was a second trail off of the same parking lot. We didn't plan on doing both trails, but neither of them was very long. So after some food, we explored the second trail, the Sinking Stream Trail.
A Heart-Shaped Leaf
Peaking into a hole in a tree, until they realized there were spiders in there.
Jared took some really awesome pictures of butterflies. These butterflies were so big. The girls loved them.
The road leading to the trail had lots of bends in it. At one point, Rachel started to whine some. Just a few minutes after we commented, "Hopefully she doesn't get car sick," Rachel threw up. She had gotten car sick. So on the way home, we turned her around. She has weighed enough to face forward for quite some time, but we were following the recommendation to keep her rear-facing until 2 years old. Being only a few months shy of that, we didn't end up turning her back after this trip. She loved facing forward. (In the picture, the chair was not at the right angle. We ended up fixing it.)
While driving home, we saw a Road Runner. It was pretty cool.
Before getting into the van, we did a tick check on all of us. We even took off some of the girls' clothing. But when we gave the girls a bath the next morning before church, we discovered that we had missed a tick on poor little Rachel. She had a tick on the back of her ear. Yuck! She was quite the trooper, and we got it off, head and all, with the help of our Ticked Off tick remover. If you live in an area with ticks, you might check for one on Amazon.com. It has been helpful. Rachel is the only human in the family who has had a tick, but we've gotten several off of Buddy with it.
On the morning of Mother's Day, I received some exciting news. I had been feeling really exhausted during and the whole day after my workouts. I had questioned whether I was pregnant, but I didn't think I was due to some bleeding and other things. But while we had been out at the trails the day before, I kept feeling hungry, despite having eaten like I normally had been. On the way to the trail, I felt that I had to eat a snack. So I ate my snack. Then while on the first trail, I felt that I really needed to eat. That was partly why I was pro-eating lunch at snack time. I was going to be heading to my sister's house after dinner on Sunday. On Saturday night, I asked Jared, "If I were to find out that I'm pregnant while at Maria's house, would you want me to tell you over the phone, or would you want me to wait until I got back?" He wasn't sure and asked if I really thought I was pregnant. I replied, "No, I really don't think I am, but there have just been a few things that have reminded me of when I first got pregnant previously." So Sunday morning, I was waiting in bed as Jared was making breakfast and taking care of the girls. I really had to go to the bathroom, so I decided to go ahead and take a pregnancy test. I was truly surprised to see two lines. I did not expect it to be a positive test. But I found out that I'm pregnant on Mother's Day. I went out to share the news with Jared and then headed back to bed until breakfast was ready. Despite not expecting a positive result, I was really excited. We had been trying, so it was truly exciting news to receive on Mother's Day - I would be a mother, again! We did not share the news with the world for another month or so. I was only 30 days at the time, so it was still early.
Yeah for your family. Happy mothers day really late. your girls are so cute....and so different. Beautiful hiking trails.
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