Franklin Ghost Town

Since the Easter Bunny provided some new hiking boots, the kids and I decided to start breaking them in.  We headed to Franklin Ghost Town.  It's a short hike, just 2.5 miles round trip.  Unfortunately, we didn't make it to the end.  Dillon started to feel unwell so we had to turn around.  He stuck it out as long as he could and ended up needing a piggy back ride for a good portion of the way back, good backpacking training!  

 Franklin was a mining town, they've got one of the old coal carts on display along the trail . It closed up just shy of 100 years ago.  Apparently it had a pretty significant accident happen in the mine.  37 people died of suffocation when one of them started a fire, intentionally. 

 They've got it all sealed and gated, which is smart considering it's about 1300ft straight down.  We had fun making echoes.  We made it to a few foundations, one of which was the power house.  It was interesting because of the way they're tucked in the hill.  It's pretty steep on both sides and you can tell they actually cut back some of the land to make level building locations.  Hopefully we can make it to the cemetery next time.

It was a pretty easy trail, the majority of what we did was an old rail road grade.  There was a fire department on another trail doing their swift water rescue training.  We were hoping to head down that way and watch for a bit, maybe they'll be there next time.

Tolmie State Park

We went to Tolmie State Park to visit with Aunt Ayana, Clara and Joel (the newest cousin).  These pictures basically ended up in here backwards but ultimately it doesn't matter.

Joel was only awake for the first 10 minutes or so, then he fell asleep and spent the afternoon snuggled with his mom.  Of course, I forgot to get his picture.

There were thousands of these Oyster clusters all over the beach, once the tide went out.

The kids worked together to gather crabs.  The largest ones were about the size of a quarter.

They even found a couple tiny hermit crabs.

Aunt Ayana showed the kids how to dig for clams.  They managed to get a couple of them .

Once again, there were thousands of live sand dollars across the beach.  It makes you kind of nervous walking around since they're so delicate. 

They had fun feeling the "fuzz"

Clara was willing to touch the sand dollar and shells, she had no interest whatsoever in holding a crab.

One of the hermit crabs Dillon found.  He figured out pretty quickly that it would come out once it was underwater.

Grandma G talked Kayda up to Clara, big time.  It all started with Clara wanting to play games on Grandma G's ipad, Grandma didn't know how to play them so she would tell Clara "Kayda will have to show you."  and such.  So the first thing Clara did was ask for Kayda.  Despite having three cousins to dote on her, Kayda was the only one she was really interested in.  Clara would be down the beach yelling for Kayda to go with her.

Clara took off running and Kayda, Dillon and Carson tagged along.  They were all incredibly attentive and had a great time with Clara.

Kayda, Dillon and Carson kept turning over big rocks to find the crabs.

We didn't spend a terribly long time since it was pretty chilly.  You can see all the red fingers!  They had a great time and we're looking forward to seeing their family again in July.

Easter!

This year we decided to try something a little different for Easter.  Normally we dyed hard boiled eggs and ending up not eating them all.  This year we got plastic ones; and stuffed them with candy.  We actually had a really good time doing it and then there were a lot more for the kids to hunt Easter morning.  Each kid ended up having 32 eggs to find!  We did label them again so they had to find THEIR eggs. 

 The Easter bunny brought them hiking boots!  We're really excited to put them to use!

Carson decided to wear a dress shirt since Easter is a special occasion!

 There were so many eggs they ended up hunting in the front and the backyard this year.