O is for Outside

We got outside this week! I've been itching to go on a little (or big) hike for a while now. We finally found an opportunity that gave us an excuse to get out.

I am part of some random homeschool groups on Facebook that have some sort of focus. One of the groups that I like join activities from quite often is an outdoors in Oregon with homeschoolers group. They have started Mom and me Monday hikes. This last Monday was the first, and we had a pretty good time.

The first one was in Dundee, OR. This is "wine country" here. There are a lot of hills and vineyards in this area, so we basically hiked to the top of a hill, checked out the Dundee cemetery, and then went back down. About a 1.5 mile round trip. Pretty doable for these kids. It ended up being a pretty good climb uphill for the way up though.

At the trailhead

The trail was very nice, and not too muddy. It wasn't raining until the very last little bit, it started sprinkling a bit.

My little Alex found a geocache. Good thing we grabbed a few goodies from the van, just in case. He found this one quite by accident. He was just looking around for something.

The view at the top from the cemetery was quite breathtaking. We walked through the whole cemetery too. We looked at headstones, names, dates (did a little math!), and wondered what awesome stories these people might have told. Some were very old, and some were newer. We could tell there were many family plots with several members of the family buried together. It was a great learning experience/exploration. I think all the kids had a good time. Even my boys who were dragging their feet before the hike both said they really liked the hike. Win!

Next time I am definitely remembering to wear my hiking boots which are more waterproof! My feet were very wet at the end of this hike. Hoping to get some nature studies in too!

I am linking this to Hopkins Homeschool for the weekly blogging through the alphabet hop.