Red Top Mountain

On the 27th we were all going a little stir crazy. Lance and I tossed around several ideas on things to do and finally decided on going to Red Top Mountain. There are several trails that aren’t too difficult. We bundled everyone up (it was in the mid 40’s that afternoon) and headed out. Everyone was excited to be out and in the fresh air. We started out right around 4:00 and knew we needed to be back before the sun went down around 5:30ish.

So off we went.

The kids did great. They had a lot of fun exploring the woods.

You can’t tell in this picture of Sam but as we walked up on this log he thought it was a deer. From far away it did look that way.

Hayes was nice and bundled up in the stroller. I even laid a blanket over the canopy to keep the wind off of his face. He slept most of the way and didn’t cry once.

We were so impressed with how well the kids were doing at the one mile mark we decided to keep on going. We gave ourselves a time that we needed to be heading back in the way we came. The trails were very easy to follow because the trees were marked with paint colors that coordinated with the maps. We were following the red trail. Every once in a while I would open the map on my phone just to make sure we were doing the right thing.

A while later Lance decided to cut through the woods to another trail he could see thinking it was the same trail we were on. I started noticing that the trees were marked with white paint but Lance was a good bit ahead of me. The white trail was a bit rough due to roots, steep hills and pushing the stroller made me slow. We made it down to a part of the lake and stopped to check it out. While Lance and the kids walked down to the water I pulled my phone map out once again and we realized we needed to turn around. It wasn’t a big deal because we were too far off track.

However, that little detour was about a 15 minute detour and about 15 minutes before we got back to the car the kids started melting down. They were both getting tired and getting back to the car was a lot of up hill climbs. About five minutes from the car, Reese tripped and got a big bruise on her knee. That made her decide that she did not like our trip even though for the first hour and a half she was having fun. I think we finally convinced her that one incident didn’t define our whole adventure.

Overall, we had a great time. Next time we will definitely start out earlier though so I am not getting stressed at the end about making it back to the car before dark. I was starting to get worried about that towards the end. However, we made it just in time. We will definitely be doing that again! What a fun day!