Over the River and Through the Woods

What's something you can do on an absolutely gorgeous Saturday morning? Why hike of course! It's the perfect way to get in some great exercise, take in God's creation and make new memories. To top it off, I got to do all of these things with our Youth Group. Talk about an awesome group of young people. The Lord has blessed our church with a growing number of teenagers on fire for the Lord. What an honor it is to walk with them through the journey that the Lord has them on.

We met at the church early this morning. After loading the kids onto the church van, we were off. We made our way to the trail head at Crabtree Falls. I've done several hikes in our surrounding area and this was another great one to add to the list.

Everyone grabbed water and their packs and we were on our way. There were several lookout points along the trail which made the ascent well worth the effort. The elevation change was just enough to give a little burn to the muscles but not enough to make you want to turn around and just roll back the way you came (I've encountered some of those steep climbs.)

We stopped for a few photo ops along the way. The kids had a blast (as did the adults).

After about an hour, we reached the top.

The falls were gorgeous and the view was breathtaking. I'll never understand how anyone could think that this amazing work of God art was formed by anything other than our Creator.

Here are a few of my favorite sights from along the way.

 

And our view from the top.

We eventually made our way back down and patted ourselves on the back for making the 4 mile round trip.

My day didn't stop there. My little red-head and I headed to a local farmer's market to grab a few items. While there, we discovered that there was a folk trio providing entertainment. G loved the music and proved her excitement by kicking her feet to the beat and clapping her hands. She tried to "sing" between bites of her peach ice cream.

G intently listening to the music

 

Clapping and singing to the music

 

Peach ice cream...yum!

Afterwards we headed home where we both grabbed a nap. I grilled out for dinner and played several rounds of tickle monster, sang Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes and grabbed some sweet baby snuggles before bath and bedtime. Tomorrow should prove to be just as wonderful. We have church and then will be heading to my work's end of year cookout. Have a blessed weekend everyone!