Long walks and skipping stones

We had a wonderful day yesterday. We decided to go for a walk and ended up finding the Oaks Park Wildlife Reserve. I hadn't realized that it was so near our house. I guess there is also a 40-mile bike trail in and around the park too.

We walked on the trail for a while. The trail went under the train track and then along the Willamette River. We found a little trail down to the river, so we scaled it down. All along the river are smooth stones, so we started skipping them. I am no good at skipping stones, but Joey is some kind of pro at it. The most I could skip a stone was twice, but some of Joey's stones skipped seven or eight times! Tania tried it several times, but had a hard time getting the right throw. That's okay. It's not an essential life skill.

The river was so calm and peaceful. There was not another soul in sight, except for one kayaker who paddled by. We stayed down there for quite a while.

When we were headed back, we spotted an apple tree with ripe apples. The tree was over a fence and on the other side of the train track. So Joey lifted Tania over the fence and she ran across the traintrack to pick as many apples as she could! Don't worry; we were watching for trains. We also found some ripe blackberries. We picked them and ate them very quickly.

It was a very nice and relaxing day. The weather was beautiful. It was cold when we started out on our walk, but by the time we made it home, we had all taken off our jackets. The sky was blue, and of course, the leaves were all kinds of colors. Tania collected leaves, pinecones, and rocks.

We have this Northwest nature book, so when we got home, Tania pulled it out and found all the plants and trees that we had seen that day. We didn't see any animals, but the plants and trees are all new to us, so they were exciting enough.