St. Mary's River State Park.

We went hiking today at St. Mary's River State Park.

It's a frequent haunt of ours and pretty much the only good hiking anywhere near us.

It was SO good to get back on the trail.

We did three glorious miles.

I took tons of pictures.

The kids had a GREAT time.

Jonah ran almost the entire way ahead of us.  He's training for a mile long run we're heading to Cincinnati for in May (Michael will be running the marathon; me?  MAYBE the 10K).  The little guy is FAST!

Maeryn rode in the backpack most of the way, but walked the last quarter mile.  It was a good day:

There's the cute little girl donned in all pink.  Daddy is sporting the Kelty Kids Journey - we got it on super sale at REI a few years back for Jonah.  It's served us very well.

 

Here's Jonah on the beginnings of his crazy run through the woods.  At one point he got scared because he ran a little out of ear shot and ran back to us in tears.  It didn't take long for him to hit the trail again on his own, however.  Not too long before we'll be hitting the AT  :-)

Saw these berries and had to grab a picture - the reds and greens are gorgeous!

Jonah grabbed his sister's hat when we stopped for snacks:  dried cranberries, Gushers, and pretzel sticks.

Not such a huge fan of the Great Value ad we seem to be showing here - I hate Walmart and pretty much everything about it, but being on the budget we are currently on forces us into things we wouldn't really like to be doing if we could help it.  I love how Michael looks in this picture - yes, I realize he's in the middle of eating something, but I think it sort of really captures how I see him as a person.

Jonah ran ahead and ended up in the mobile long before we made it to the end of the trail.  He surprised us by sticking his head out of the door and screaming at us, monster style.

The Adventure Mobile

Our 2008 Honda Fit is the little car we have picked up to replace my old Dodge Dakota Sport. Joe, as I called him, was a good truck, and I felt pretty darn powerful behind the wheel, to be honest, with my V6 engine pulling me along and a bunch of junk to haul in the bed, but we have two children now, and when we found out I was pregnant with Maeryn, we decided Joe had to bite it, so to speak. So we said goodbye and bought the Fit.

We chose this particular vehicle after much research on Michael's part. He loves to research things, make charts and graphs about them in Excel, and then make his choice based on this research. I usually just go and pick what looks good at the time. I think both ways have their merits, but I'm glad we went with Michael's on this one. We wanted to vehicle that got great gas mileage and didn't totally suck for the environment and fell within a price range that wasn't too pricey. This was the first actual new car I've ever had. All of my cars in the past had been used (all two of them).

I must recommend the Fit to anyone in the market for a new car and less than three children. It is incredibly spacious, the back seats fold down completely, and you can fit just about anything in the sucker: strollers, bikes, diaper bags, hiking gear, luggage for a week - you know the drill. It's a good car.

So we call it our Adventure Mobile.

We also have a Dodge Caravan, but for some reason, it's just not the same as the Adventure Mobile. We don't really take it on adventures unless we need more than one bike, and it just doesn't seem very fitting in the bush, though it does make a great camping vehicle if you leave the back open the entire time and make it a base camp.

Some of the adventures posted here will be based around the Adventure Mobile, as is the title of the blog. Some, yes, a few, will be based around the Caravan. All of course, are really just about our Adventure Family, but that URL was already taken.