Good weekend for the Towpath

It seems like lately all I've wanted to do is update you guys on my medical issues, and while I have had quite the string of weird events lately, I will spare you. Instead I wanted to share with you some beautiful pics from a trip husband and I took the other day on the towpath.

It was so nice to finally get out and walk.  We headed over to the Ira Trailhead and followed it to Everett.  We ended up doing 3.5 miles (well just a bit over that) and swung unto the farmer's market that's there as well when we finished up. Picked up some delicious watermelon! Yum!

I've never been on this leg of the towpath, and because of the issues I've been having lately, we decided to take it slow and really just enjoy the scenery.  It's amazing what you see when you stop and slow down!

I'll let the pictures walk you along with us!

Berries.  I know, not super exciting, or unique.  But they were so ripe and red -
again, not somethingI would normally notice! 

This little guy was just hanging out, enjoying the sun.

Lily Pads, sans frogs :(

Cardinal, playing hide-and-seek with us. We won. 

This blue herring was beautiful!

What did you do this weekend to enjoy the weather?

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A weekend of hiking

This weekend husband and I had the chance to go check out the parks again on both Saturday and Sunday.  I don't know what earned us two days of beautiful weather, but I'll take it!

On Saturday we took another trip over to Virginia Kendall Ledges park (Peninsula, Ohio).  We went hiking there a few weekends back. Of course husband took his camera, but we didn't take any photos.  This time we went and explored a secondary trail off of it with some friends, and this trail was quite the boring route.  Nothing exciting to see, tons of mud and bugs and blah. We walked somewhere between 4.5 and 5 miles (our pedometers disagree and I can't map it online..) in two hours.  When we wrapped up we had a delicious picnic and just relaxed.  I had zero intention of coming home and sleeping, but that's exactly what we did. Came home, sat down and slept for two hours.

Sunday started miserable and the rain was looming.  However, as the day continued, the rain held off, we figured we'd check out another park.  This was our first mistake.  It was already 2ish when we decided to do this. We got the address for Firestone Metro Park and headed off.

This trip was a distaster to start with.  First we decided to park by Coventry Oaks, figured we'd see a sign and get on the trail.  No.  From where we roamed around - we just found unmarked paths, so we just followed until we eventually stumbled onto another entrance, which apparently is the senior walking route, and found a map.  In the 15 minutes it took me to do this - we were soaked. The humidity was outrageous and the sun was blasting down on us, and there's limited shading. We took the Willow Trail and off we went.  It wasn't too bad for mud, but to be honest the path was boring, the scenery was lacking and there was just nothing making the trip interesting.  It took us just under an hour and I honestly felt more exhausted than I had the day before when we cranked out double the milage and double the time on a harder trail. Husband grabbed a few photos (I refused ANY because we were sweaty messes!):

Yep - the most exciting thing there, the ducks.

Hope you guys made the most of a beautiful weekend!