Buffalo Peak 2.0

We hiked Buffalo Peak 5 years ago and decided it was time to give it another try.  This time we decided to encourage the kids to hike as much as possible, and didn't even bring a backpack for Luke.  The hike is only about 1/2 mile and most of the way it's level.  Once you get to the base of the "peak" (hill), then the trail becomes pretty steep, but it doesn't last for very long.  We talked to some adults at the top, and they said it took them 15-20 minutes to get from the trail head to the peak.

We were hiking on Labor Day, which was also Football Christmas, with an evening game for FSU, so we turned the hike into our Family Home Out Evening Mid-Day.  Once we were all at the top of the hill, we found a quiet spot to sit down and eat a snack while I shared this story I found in The Friend.  I liked that it had to do with having to climb mountains and taught the lesson that children may receive revelation just as well as adults.

Between the FOM lesson, the wrong turns (one in the name of "finding a shortcut," and another that we mistook for the right trail), trudging through the forest to get back on to the right trail, several minutes trying to find the wild turkeys which were reported to be nearby, some photo breaks, and the painstakingly slow pace of Luke's "hiking," we managed to turn a 30-minute round-trip hike into a 2.5-hour excursion.  I think we deserve a special award.

Cat brought Jack's US Army Survival Manual (guess which grandfather sent it to him
for Christmas) and tried to identify poisonous and edible plants throughout the excursion.
Is it any surprise that she wishes she could be a Boy Scout?

Just starting out, with the peak in the background.

Luke's preferred pace: sitting.

Photo op while we waited for Ben and Luke to catch up.

Wild turkeys!

Luke and Ben finally made it to the peak, with the parking area barely visible on the left side.

Luke walked almost the entire way,
once he was finished sitting.

The Views:

Here, Jack and Luke are looking over a big drop-off right beside the trail.
In this exact spot, Jack almost ran off the mountain last time we did this hike,
when he was 3.  He just started going down the steep part of the trail too fast and
could have gone right over, but some other hikers caught him.  We're so grateful
to those kind strangers!

Jack and Eliza had fun with these ramps (rocks) that were in the

experimental trail we took on the way back to the car.  Turns out, it

wasn't the best experiment.  But the rocks were fun to jump off of.

This picture doesn't do Luke's dirtiness justice.