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| Our only Lubbock trails may be somewhat grim today (David and I joked that we felt like Adam and Eve just getting kicked out of the Garden of Eden for the lone and dreary world), but hundreds of years ago this place was green and wet and the camping/hunting place of choice for nearby tribes. |
One of the Awesome Things I was most excited about for this summer was National Trails Day (the first
Saturday in June). The Lubbock Lake Landmark (where we went stargazing) had
posted months ago a series of events that would be going on in order to help
people celebrate. Its promised activities included "creating a butterfly,
paper-making, [making] wildflower seed balls, taking an incredible journey,
[identifying] animal tracks, self-guided activities to watch birds, walking in
nature (journals and pencils provided)." There was a scheduled
wildflower-identification nature hike at 9:30 a.m. and a night hike scheduled
for 8:00 p.m.
We decided to head off in
the morning, before Hollie's first nap. On our way we grabbed some donuts and
Texas-style kolaches, and Holls once again drank all her milk before we even
arrived at the park. We anticipated that place would be bumping with families
and kids making cornhusk dolls and filling out animal print identification
packets, but when we arrived we realized......there.....was.....no one....
*echooo...echooo*
Seriously. The parking lot
was completely empty.
We uneasily made our way down to the visitor center (which we
assumed was locked up tight by the looks of things), but the doors opened and
we only waited a moment for a ranger to appear behind the desk with a map of
the trails and a clipboard where we could sign in. There was only one other
name on the list—someone who must have come and gone before we arrived.
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| Hollie loves to practice stair climbing these days. She would have stayed here the entire hour had we let her. |
In spite of the fact that
we were the only people in Lubbock celebrating National Trails Day at our
nearby trails, it was actually quite a lovely day for a walk outside. The
temperature was in the high 70s/low 80s, and a nice steady breeze cooled us off
even more. It was perfectly lovely. I'm glad we took advantage of being
outside, since we get more and more cooped up these days because of the heat.
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| It has become a Grover Family Joke that Hollie never sees bunnies when we are adventuring around town. We try to point them out and she always runs right by them without seeing them. In this case, she was running and saying "Munny! Munny!" (her word for "Bunny") without ever seeing that little rabbit. |
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| She did appreciate the large armadillo statue, however. |
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| David played tour guide and pointed out the interesting wildflowers, yucca plants, and grasshoppers he spotted. |
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| We had left the stroller at home, but Holls loved hiking on her own. Walking with Hollie is like walking with a little dog. She's either darting far ahead of the rest of us, or lagging behind to sniff out something interesting. It is all stop and go. |
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| A happy pregnant lady breaking in her new Chacos. |
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| Introducing Hollie to nature-appreciation. This is about as good as it gets here in West Texas. But it's good! Hollie will hopefully always be able to appreciate even the most humble of natural beauties after living here. |
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| Dig sites where the nearby university students look for artifacts and bones. Exciting! |
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| David pointing out birds to Holls. Up above them is a vulture pretending to be a UFO. |
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| At the very end of our hike, we found out that our bunny friend was still around, so David made sure that Hollie could see him this time. |
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| Our adventure concluded with Hollie chasing the poor rabbit all around this patch of grass, shouting, "Munnnnnnieeeeeee!" with gratuitous glee. |
Since getting home, I have gone back to check the websites that announced such a to-do today at the park, and I found out that the only activity still active for today is the night hike. Ah, well. It was a grand Grover adventure, anyway, and a nice way to take advantage of a Saturday morning.
And thus Thing #22: Celebrate National Trails Days by walking on a national trail = ACCOMPLISHED.
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