I heard from Ash B’Dash the Geocacher (who’s added a bunch of Mine Kill and Max Shaul events to KidsOutAndAbout.com) and realized that I’d never followed up my posts on Geocaching at Mine Kill and Camping at Max Shaul with a post on our gorgeous hike at Mine Kill State Park.
It was awesome. We left our geocaching activity and headed in the general direction of the falls. Along the way, J noticed something that M, Cute W, and I had all missed: a porcupine! I’d never encountered a porcupine out in the wild. He was a slow, shambling sort of fellow. If in fact he was a fellow. Cute W took some video. M had hiked waaay ahead of us, and when we called her back with the most hushed shouts ever, she basically rolled her eyes and said, “That’s it?” You may recall that little J wiped the floor with M during the earlier geocaching, and now she was kicking her butt in Powers of Observation. So M played indifferent.
Porcupine
We found a stream and waterfalls that were gorgeous and so fun to explore. We’d brought along water shoes, so we all waded in.
We found fascinating natural specimens.
And climbed some more. Actually, J was climbing like some sort of a mountain goat. M just stopped, and J was out of control. Here she is climbing far above M and me. Cute W followed her, and I don’t think he ever quite caught up with her.
Check the top-right quadrant; see that blur of turquoise between the trees?
I took the opportunity to lounge on a flat rock while M meandered at a mellower pace. I’m camouflaged in the picture below.
See me? You can just barely see my feet between the tree trunks in the middle.
Finally we found ourselves in the more populated portion of the falls, just below the scenic overlook that people park at right off the highway. There were plenty of picnickers and kids wading along the rocky shore, and it was lovely.
But we all agreed that our favorite part of the falls was the stretch hidden away among the trees, where it was just us. It was a beautiful adventures.
